‘Williams? Which Williams? There are dozens.’
‘J. H., headmaster. In the Modern Sixth. He’s playing Henry.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. I think I’d better have a word with him…By the way, your dress rehearsal’s this evening, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ll try and look in,’ said the headmaster, ‘if I can find the time.’
So Mathieson returned to the task of instilling Wordsworthian metaphysics into the barren intellects of the Modern Lower Fifth, and the headmaster made his way to the porter’s office, where he left instructions that J. H. Williams was to be summoned to his study immediately after morning school.
When Wells, the porter, entered the Modem Sixth room ten minutes before the end of the last period, he found Mr Etherege expounding the technics of demonology and black magic.
Wells was not greatly surprised at this. Mr Etherege was one of those leavening eccentrics who are sometimes to be found at a large public school, and he had been at Castrevenford for so long that he now legislated for himself, both as to what he taught and as to how he taught it. He had a fancy for the esoteric and remote, and among his more recent obsessions were yoga, Notker Balbulus, an obscure eighteenth-century poet named Samuel Smitherson, the lost island of Atlantis and the artistic significance of the blues. No boy passed through his hands without acquiring some knowledge of whatever obscure and useless subject happened to interest him at the moment.
The framers of education acts have little use for such dominies as Mr Etherege; but in this, as in so many other things, they are grossly impercipient. The fact is that every large school requires an advocatus diaboli – and at Castrevenford Mr Etherege occupied this important post. He was flagrantly lacking in public spirit. He never attended important matches. He was not interested in the spiritual welfare of his boys. He lacked respect for the school as an institution. In short, he was impenitently an individualist. And if, at first sight, these characteristics do not appear particularly commendable, you must remember their context. In a school like Castrevenford a good deal of emphasis is necessarily laid on public spirit, and the thing is liable to develop, if unregulated, into a rather dreary fetish. Mr Etherege helped to keep this peril at bay, and consequently the headmaster valued him as much as his more sternly dutiful colleagues. His divagations from the approved syllabus were the price that had to be paid, and its evils had in any case been minimized by the removal from his timetables of all work for important examinations.
Cautiously skirting the mirific sign of the pentagram which was chalked on the floor, Wells delivered the headmaster’s message to Mr Etherege, who passed it on, embroidered with pessimistic conjecture, to J. H. Williams. Wells departed, and Mr Etherege commented briskly on the Grand Grimoire until an electric bell, shrilling violently throughout the building, indicated that morning school was over; at this he uttered a cantrip, designed, as he said, to protect J. H. Williams from bodily harm during his interview with the headmaster, and dismissed the class. Williams – a dark, clever, good-looking boy of sixteen – at once made his way through a jostling, clamorous, rout of his contemporaries to the headmaster’s study, his vague apprehensions unallayed by Mr Etherege’s promise of supernatural protection.
He found the headmaster gazing out of his window, with his hands clasped behind his back.
‘Williams,’ said the headmaster without preliminary, ‘you must not make assignations with young women.’
A moment’s reflection had persuaded him that this was the likeliest gambit for their interview. He knew that Williams was a candid and sensible boy, who would deny such an accusation only if it were untrue.
Williams went red in the face. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Be more accurate, Williams,’ the headmaster admonished him mildly. ‘If, at your age, you’re sorry that you arranged to meet an attractive girl, then you ought to be examined by a doctor…The phrase you should use in such circumstances is: “I apologize”.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Williams agreed, rather helplessly.
‘And where exactly was this rendezvous?’
‘In the science building, sir.’
‘Ah. I take it, then, that the arrangement was made during last evening’s rehearsal?’
‘Yes, sir. The rehearsal ended at nine forty-five. So there was a quarter of an hour to spare before I needed to be back at my house.’
The headmaster made a mental note that this gap must not be allowed to occur next year.
‘This appointment,’ he said, ‘was it made on your own initiative?’
‘Well, sir’ – Williams risked an apologetic grin – ‘one might say it was a cooperative effort.’
‘Indeed.’ The headmaster considered for a moment. ‘Have you any excuses to make?’
‘Well, sir, I don’t know if you’ve actually seen Brenda, sir—’
The headmaster interrupted him. ‘Yes, that’s obviously the only justification you could offer: Vénus tout entière à son Williams attachée. Being in the Modem Sixth, you should know your Racine.’
‘It’s only natural at my age, sir,’ Williams murmured hopefully, ‘as you said yourself.’
‘Did I?’ said the headmaster. ‘That was indiscreet of me. But if we all gave way to our natural impulses as and when we felt like it, we should soon be back at the Stone Age…What exactly happened during your meeting with this young woman?’
Williams looked surprised. ‘Nothing, sir. I wasn’t able to turn up.’
‘What?’ the headmaster exclaimed.
‘Mr Pargiton caught me, sir, just as I was leaving the hall. As you know, sir, we’re supposed to go back to our houses immediately the rehearsal’s over, even if it finishes early…And of course, I was heading at the time in the opposite direction to Hogg’s. Mr Pargiton’ – Williams’ tone betrayed considerable resentment – ‘took me back and handed me over to Mr Fry.’
The headmaster reflected that Pargiton’s officiousness, which was normally rather tiresome, had its uses after all.
‘And you’re prepared to swear,’ he said, ‘that after the rehearsal you never set eyes on the girl?’
‘Yes, sir. That’s the truth.’
The headmaster sat down abruptly in the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘As I said before, you must not make assignations with young women.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nor must you, on leaving this room, go round complaining about obscurantist repression of wholesome desires.’
‘No, sir, I shouldn’t dream—’
‘Your mind, Williams, is probably full of half-baked Freudian dogma.’
‘Well, actually, sir—’
‘Forget it. God forbid
