and inchoate daydream, and was momentarily unaware that Simblefield had finished. He was an untidy, heavily built man of middle age, clumsy in his movements; and he wore an ancient sports coat with leather pads sewn to the elbows, and a pair of baggy grey trousers.
The sound of fidgeting aroused him, and his reverie merged discouragingly into the austere reality of the classroom. It was a large, box-like place, the lower reaches of its walls liberally decorated with ink and fingermarks. The master’s desk, ponderous and antiquated, stood on a dais beside a pitted and pock-marked wall blackboard. There were a few cheerless pictures of indefinite rustic and classical scenes. A thin film of chalk covered everything. And some twenty boys sat behind wilfully collapsible desks, occupying their brief intermission in various more or less destructive and useless ways.
Mathieson observed that Simblefield was no longer giving tongue, but was, instead, gazing at him with much complacency.
‘Simblefield,’ he said, ‘have you any notion at all of the meaning of this poem?’
‘Oh, sir,’ said Simblefield feebly.
‘Just what is our attitude to nature in our thoughtless youth, Simblefield? You must be well qualified to answer that question.’
There was some laughter of a rather insincere kind. ‘Potty Simblefield,’ said someone.
‘Well, Simblefield? I’m waiting for an answer.’
‘Oh, sir, I don’t know, sir.’
‘Of course you must know. Think, boy. You don’t take much notice of nature, do you?’
‘Oh, yes, sir.’
‘No, you don’t, Simblefield. To you, it’s simply a background for your own personality.’
‘Yes, sir, I see, sir,’ said Simblefield rather too readily.
‘I have grave doubts, Simblefield, as to whether in fact you do see. But some of the others may.’
There was an instant clamour. ‘I understand, sir.’ ‘Only a fool like Simblefield wouldn’t understand.’ ‘Sir, it’s like when you go for a walk, sir, you don’t really notice the trees.’ ‘Sir, why do we have to read Wordsworth, sir?’
‘Quiet!’ said Mr Mathieson with determination. An uneasy hush ensued. ‘Now, that is precisely the way in which Wordsworth did not look at nature.’
‘Wordsworth was a daft fool,’ someone said sotto voce.
Mr Mathieson, after briefly considering tracing this remark to its source, and deciding against it, went on, ‘That is to say that for Wordsworth nature was more than a mere background.’
‘Sir!’
‘Well?’
‘Didn’t Wordsworth nearly have his head cut off in the French Revolution, sir?’
‘He was certainly in France shortly after the Revolution. As I was saying—’
‘Sir, why do they cut people’s heads off in France and hang them in England?’
‘And electrocute them in America, sir?’
‘And shoot them in Russia, sir?’
A further babel arose. ‘They don’t shoot them in Russia, you fool, they cut off their heads with an axe.’ ‘Sir, is it true that when they hang a man his heart goes on beating long after he’s dead?’ ‘Oh, Bagshaw, you idiot.’ ‘Yes, you fool, how could he be dead if his heart was beating?’
Mathieson banged on his desk.
‘If anyone speaks again without permission,’ he said, ‘I shall report him to his housemaster.’
This was at once effective – being, indeed, an infallible specific against any form of disorder. At Castrevenford, to be reported to one’s housemaster was a serious affair.
‘Now,’ said Mr Mathieson, ‘let us return to the subject in hand. What, Simblefield, do you suppose Wordsworth to mean by “the still, sad music of humanity”?’
‘Oh, sir.’ Simblefield was clearly dismayed at this further demand on his meagre intellectual resources. ‘Well, sir, I think it means…Look here, sir, suppose a mountain, or a bird, or something…’
Luckily for Simblefield, whose ability to camouflage his ignorance was held in well-justified contempt by the rest of the form, he was not required to finish; for it was at this moment that the headmaster entered the room.
The boys got hastily to their feet, amid a scraping of desks and banging of chairs. It was rare for the headmaster to visit a form room during school hours, and their curiosity was tempered by an apprehensive mental inventory of recent misdeeds.
‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ the headmaster remarked benignly. ‘Mr Mathieson, can you spare me a minute or two?’
‘Of course, headmaster,’ said Mathieson; and to the boys, ‘Go on reading until I come back.’
The two men went out into the corridor. It was bare, echoing, with uneven wooden boards; and owing to the fact that the teaching block had not been designed for its present purpose, being actually a converted lunatic asylum (a circumstance which regularly provoked a good deal of mediocre wit), the light was insufficient. At present, however, the corridor had the merit of being comparatively cool.
‘Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem,’ said Mr Hargrave in the adjacent room, ‘does not mean, “Remember to keep a month’s water for the hard roads”, and only a blockhead like you, Hewitt, would credit Horace with making such an asinine remark.’
The headmaster said, ‘How did the rehearsal go last night, Mathieson?’
‘Oh…well enough, headmaster. I think we shall get a reasonable performance.’
‘No troubles or hold-ups of any kind?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Ah.’ The headmaster appeared to be listening to the sounds which emanated from the Modern Lower Fifth – abrupt crescendos of chatter alternating antiphonally with panic-stricken outbursts of shushing. He applied his forefinger judicially to the centre of his lower lip.
‘This girl who’s playing the part of Katherine,’ he resumed. ‘How does she strike you?’
‘She acts well,’ said Mathieson.
‘But apart from that – as a personality.’
Mathieson hesitated before replying. ‘To be frank, headmaster, she seems to be rather a sexy young creature.’
‘Yes, I’m glad to have you confirm that. The situation is that she arrived home from last night’s rehearsal in a state of considerable agitation, and we can’t find out what upset her.’
‘She was perfectly all right during the rehearsal,’ said Mathieson. ‘Almost too lively, in fact.’
‘Yes.
