Chapter VII: Impurity

I

THE “little chat”—as Mr. Leeming would certainly have called it—did not take place for a long time, for the reverend gentleman’s mind had become exercised with a problem of greater importance than the devotion of Edwin. It wasn’t exactly his fault. Mr. Leeming was a bachelor. He was now in his forty-third year. Naturally endowed with an intense shyness of disposition which the forced publicity of his two professions, in the pulpit and the Classroom, had overlaid with a veneer of suave assurance, he was none the less a man of ardent, if timid passions. He himself had always been aware of this powerful sensual element in his nature. With a certain degree of courage he had subjected it to a deliberate mortification. Obstinately he had fitted his body to the Procrustean couch that his conscience recommended: obstinately, and in a degree successfully. Not quite successfully . . . for his original appetites were unwieldy, and if they had been coerced in one direction they had undoubtedly and demonstrably overflowed in another, as witnessed the growing expanse of his waistcoat.

This waistcoat, on week-days of broadcloth and on Sundays of a more sensual silk, was the symbol of Mr. Leeming’s possibilities. He didn’t know it. Even if he were aware, in the lacing of his boots, of its physical existence; he hadn’t the least idea of its spiritual significance. If he had realised this, if he had been content to see himself as he actually stood upon the brink of his morning bath instead of as a snowy surpliced priest of God or a knightly figure in the armour of Sir Percivale (such, indeed, was his Christian name), Mr. Leeming might have been a healthier and a happier man. As it was, the devil that he believed he had conquered, in reality possessed his soul.

In his quest for the thing which he had labelled purity he had unconsciously allowed the idea of “Impurity” to become an obsession. In the activities of a parish, hustled by the continual accidents of stark life and stabilised by the actual responsibility of a wife and an increasing family, Mr. Leeming might have become a thinner and a wiser man. In the sedentary and monotonous duties of a public school, he had become gradually more fat and introspective, and, as the years advanced, more perpetually conscious of the unashamed presence throughout human nature of his own suppressed desires,—more frightened . . . and more curious . . . of their terrible existence and more terrible power. Mr. Leeming, with the best intentions in the world, was in a bad way.

A number of circumstances favoured the development of the unfortunate gentleman’s obsession. In the last Easter holidays he had attended a conference of assistant masters in London, at which the whole question had been discussed with the greatest solemnity, and plans had been formulated for the stamping out of “impurity” in every public school in England. The speeches of the delegates had convinced him of his own blindness. It was impossible that St. Luke’s should be so very different from any other public school, yet other people had assured the meeting that in their own schools the disease was “rampant,” and Mr. Leeming had returned to his summer duties convinced that if only he looked with sufficient care more ills than he had ever suspected might be found. He had become a man with a mission.

For a crusade of this kind St. Luke’s was not by any means an ideal field. The head-master, for all his imposing presence, was not a practical man. He was intolerant of enthusiasms in his staff, not so much because they were symptomatic of ill-breeding, but because they tended to disturb the pleasant ordered tenor of his life. Croquet and botany were sciences of more interest to him than education. He believed in hard games, corporal punishment, nature study, and the classics. He hated extremes. The golden mean was his creed, his weakness, and his apology. He hadn’t any use for Mr. Leeming’s intensities. He could even be picturesque on occasion. “If you are going to appoint yourself inspector of our dirty linen, Leeming,” he said, “you really mustn’t expect me to do the washing.”

“I don’t think you understand me, sir,” Mr. Leeming began. . . .

“Oh, don’t I?” said the Head. The word Impurity formed voicelessly on Mr. Leeming’s lips.

“It is a scandalous thing . . . scandalous . . .” he complained to the common-room, “that a man who knows what is right and is determined to follow it shouldn’t be properly backed by the headmaster. The matter is vital. It is the most important . . . by far the most important problem in modern education. Any means are justified to purge the schools of this sort of thing. . . .”

“I can see you, Leeming,” drawled Selby, “in the rôle of _agent provocateur_.” The common-room exploded.

“What is wanted in the public schoolmaster is a higher sense of seriousness,” Leeming spluttered. “You have no sense of suspicion.”

“What is more wanted in the public schools,” said Cleaver, “is a suspicion of sense—common sense.”

“All you fellows talk,” said Dr. Downton, “as if the whole thing were a problem for the public schools purely and simply. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s not the ignorance of the average schoolmaster as much as the ignorance of the average parent. I mean ignorance of the nature of boys . . . lack of sympathy, lack of responsibility. And when ugly things happen they shove it on to us.”

“That’s what they pay a hundred and fifty a year for,” said Cleaver.

“Of which we don’t see any too much . . .” Selby growled.

“None of you take it seriously. The thing is enormous,” said Leeming. “What can you expect in a way of improvement when a housemaster like Selby makes jokes about it? I’m convinced that there’s only one way. . . . You can’t drive boys. You’ve got to understand their hearts.”

“You’ve got to understand their bodies,” said Cleaver.

Mr. Leeming flushed. “I think you are merely disgusting, Cleaver.”

“He’s quite right,” said Downton. “It isn’t sexual education, it isn’t moral instruction that’s going to work the miracle. When a boy reaches a certain age—and it isn’t the same age with all boys—he begins to be conscious, and quite properly, of his physical passions. You needn’t shudder, Leeming. They exist. You know they exist as well as anybody. Well, when he reaches that stage a public school isn’t the proper place for him.”

“The games would go to pot,” said Cleaver. From his point of view there was no more to be said.

“It depends entirely on your boy. Some are too old at seventeen. Some are perfectly safe at nineteen. The trouble is that just when you get them in sight of these dangers you put them in supreme authority. A prefect can do pretty well as he likes. . . .”

“It’s the essence of the system . . . responsibility,” said Selby.

“It gives them what Shaw said about something else: the maximum of inclination with the maximum of opportunity.”

“Shaw?” said Cleaver. “You fellows are too deep for me. Anyway, I don’t believe there’s much wrong here. So long.” He swung out of the room.

“That kind of man,” said Mr. Leeming, “is at the root of the whole business.”

Dr. Downton was almost angry. “Yon know, Leeming, you’re talking bosh. The thing’s solving itself. All over the world schoolboys are getting wider interests at school. In their homes they’re taking a more equal place in family life. It is no longer a matter of being seen and not heard. They’re being treated like human beings. The more you treat them like human beings the less likely they are to behave like young animals. And the greatest mistake of all is to keep on talking to them about it. Every boy of a certain age is curious, and quite naturally curious, about his physical possibilities. So is every girl. . . .”

“My dear Downton,” said Leeming flushing, “I shall be obliged if you won’t—er—pursue the subject. You make it painful. . . .”

“Very well,” said Downton gathering up the skirts of his gown.

“Thank you.” Leeming left the room. Selby smiled lazily.

“If only,” he said, “if only our friend Leeming had ever enjoyed the advantage of a really bad woman’s society.”

II

Unconscious of the doom which was being forged for their chastisement in the white heat of Mr. Leeming’s troubled brain, the school lay scattered along the perimeter of the cricket-field waiting for the players to emerge from the pavilion. They came, and the great expanse of green was made more beautiful by their scattered figures. Everything in the game seemed spacious and smooth and clean—the white flannels of the players; the paler green of the rolled pitch; the new red ball; the sharp click of the bat. Before lunch the school had lost three wickets, but now it seemed as if a stand were to be made. The studious Carr, the head of Edwin’s house, was batting steadily; while Gilson, the school’s most showy batsman, who would play for Surrey in the holidays, was beginning to get set. Edwin and Widdup had their deck-chairs side by side, and Douglas, for want of Griffin, absent on some deeper business, had pitched himself near them, reclining upon a positive divan of downy cushions.

The winnings of the house sweepstake, easily gained, and therefore easily to be spent, supplied the natural accompaniment of ices and ginger beer or that inimitable compound of both that was known as the Strawberry Cooler. Under such circumstances the mere fact of lazy existence was a pleasure. Even when the cautious Carr was bowled, the long partnership ended, and the St. Luke’s wickets began to fall like autumn leaves, the serene beauty of the day was scarcely clouded.

In the middle of the afternoon the figure of Mr. Leeming drifted along the edge of the field. He halted on the path immediately in front of Edwin with his back to the spectators, considerably incommoding Douglas’s view of the play. “Old Beelzebub’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Ingleby?” said Douglas lazily. “You might tell him that he isn’t made of glass.” But Mr. Leeming, suddenly aware of a voice behind him, turned and came towards them, smiling.

“Ah, Ingleby,” he said. “Is that you?”

He sat on the grass beside them, very carefully, as befitted a man of his figure. “A beautiful day. Let me see, who are we playing?”

“The M.C.C., sir.”

“Ah, yes . . . the Marylebone Cricket Club. Are you fond of cricket, Ingleby?”

“Of course I am, sir.”

“I very seldom see you now. That’s the pity of it. The better a boy is the less you see of him. He passes through your form quickly, and that’s the end of it. And how is Widdup?”

Widdup was very well, if a little impatient

“You and Ingleby are great friends, Widdup. Quite inseparable. I’ve often seen you walking up and down the quad at night. I wonder what it is you have in common, eh?”

Widdup didn’t know. They’d always been pals. They’d always slept alongside each other. That was how you got to know a chap.

“Well, Ingleby, what are you reading in these days?”

“Well hit, sir; oh, well hit. . . . Make it five. I beg your pardon, sir. . . I don’t think I’m reading anything in particular.”

Slowly it became evident to Mr. Leeming that the audience which he had honoured with his company was bored. With great dignity he picked himself up and left them.

“He’s a funny old swine,” said Douglas.

“I used to think he was rather decent,” said Edwin. “Horribly ‘pi’ you know.”

“I don’t trust him,” said Douglas. “I always feel as if he’s up to some low-down business or other. He goes mooching about in those old felt slippers of his, and you never know where he is. The other day he came into the long box-room when Griff and I were there playing Nap. You couldn’t tell he was coming. He’s like a damned old tomcat. I can’t think how you stick him, Ingleby. . . .”

“I don’t, really,” Edwin confessed.

“And old Griff says he follows him like a shadow. Just lately he’s taken to haunting the swimming-bath. I don’t know what he goes there for. He never used to. He never goes in. I don’t suppose the fat beast can swim.”

“He could float . . .” said the practical Widdup.

The golden afternoon dragged out its lovely length. The atmosphere of luxurious indolence grew so heavy that it became too great an effort to think of carrying the rugs and deck-chairs back to the studies; and when Douglas had left them to keep an appointment with Griffin, Widdup and Edwin sat on till the meadows swam with soft golden light, till the tops of the pyramidal lime-trees became the colour of their blossoms, and the sun cast long shadows upon the yellow fields. In this delightful hour the sounds of the match from which excitement had faded almost as the fierceness had faded from the sky, became no more than a placid accompaniment to the dying day. At six-thirty stumps were drawn. The wide fields began to empty and soon no life was seen upon them but low dipping swallows who skimmed the smooth lawn as though it were the surface of some placid lake. Upon the hillside a straggling trail of boys could be seen taking home their rugs and cushions as though they were returning from a day of toil instead of one of the most exquisite idleness.

“Come on,” said Widdup at last; “we shall be late for chapel.” And indeed another twenty minutes found them assembled in the oak pews for evensong. They sang the _Nunc Dimittis_, a canticle which for all the rest of his life Edwin associated with the placid closing of a summer day, and the mild rays of the departing sun blazed through the stained glass of the west window upon the pale mosaic of the nave. When they emerged from the chapel the sun had set, the skyline of the downs lay low and almost cold, and cockchafers were whirring blindly among the sticky tops of the conifers along the chapel path.

In the middle of the crowd that stuck congested in the porch Edwin found himself wedged between Douglas and Griffin. They whispered together behind his back. “Well, are you going?”

“Of course I’m going, I told you.”

“You’ve fixed it up with her?”

“Yes, she’s up to any sport. Why don’t you come with us?”

“Two’s company. . . .”

“Go on with you. . . . You can easily pick up another. You’re not a sportsman, Duggie.”

“I don’t take risks of that kind. You bet your boots I don’t. Why don’t you ask Ingleby? He’s a blood. Says he went to see the Birches. And he’s flush, too. Won the sweep.”

“Ingleby?” Griffin scoffed. “I bet you he’d funk it.”

“Funk what?” said Edwin.

“Going down town to-night. There’s a fair on. I’m taking the skivvy from J dorm. She’s all right. She knows a thing or two.”

“Don’t talk so loud, you ass,” said Douglas. “Well, will you come?”

“No, I won’t,” said Edwin.

“You said you went to the Birches.”

“I did go to the Birches.”

“Well, nobody believes you. Now’s your chance to show your pluck. Come along, gentlemen, show your pluck. . . . Three to one bar one. . . . ’Ere you are, sir. The old and trusted firm. Ingleby . . . you are a rotten little funk!”

Edwin said nothing. “He’s got more sense than you have, anyway, Griff,” said Douglas.

That night in the dormitory when the lights were turned down Griffin had not appeared. Douglas, who slept next to him, had constructed, by means of his own bolster and another confiscated from the bed of the small boy on whom the animosity of the coalition was now chiefly lavished, a very plausible imitation of Griffin’s prostrate figure. As Griffin habitually slept in a position which enabled him to absorb his own fugginess, this was not difficult. When Edwin went to sleep Griffin had not arrived. Drugged with fresh air he slept untroubled by any dream. In the middle of the night (as it seemed) he awoke, not because he had heard any sound but rather because he had become aware in his sleep of some unusual presence. He did not move, but slowly opened his eyes, and all he saw was the figure of Mr. Selby, gigantically tall, clad in a long bath-gown of Turkish towelling and carrying a lighted candle that cast a shadow even more gigantic on the whitewashed walls. He moved slowly and his bedroom slippers made no sound on the boarded floor. Opposite the foot of Edwin’s and Widdup’s bed he paused for a moment. Edwin closed his eyes. He felt the eyelids quiver. Why on earth should Selby want to look at him? He passed on, and Edwin, cautiously opening his eyes, saw him pause again opposite the gap between Douglas and Griffin. At this point he waited longer. He appeared to be thinking. He passed on and then suddenly turned back and gently lifted the sheet from Griffin’s pillow. Gently he replaced it. Edwin was almost too sleepy to realize that Griffin wasn’t there; but when he did, the first thought which came into his mind was one of spontaneous and inexplicable loyalty. He thought, “Poor old Griff: He’s in for it.” And yet, if there was one person in the world against whom he had a reasonable excuse for hatred . . . Very silently Selby left the dormitory. Edwin became conscious of the ghostly noises of the night: a night-jar spinning in the wood at the back of the Schoolhouse: the boom of a cockchafer that some enthusiast had captured and imported into the dormitory. The clock in the high turret struck twelve. The chime wandered clanging over the empty quadrangle.

III

The next week was the most sensational that had ever shaken the placid life of St. Luke’s. The fall of Griffin was no startling matter—deliberately he had been “asking for it,” and the escapade of the fair in race-week was no more than a crowning glory. Still, it was an impressive affair. Immediately after breakfast next morning it was whispered that Griffin had been sent to the infectious ward in the sanatorium, which was always devoted, by reason of its size rather than any conscious attempt at symbolism, to the isolation of moral leprosy. It became certain—and Edwin, after his vision of Selby’s visit in the night had taken it for granted—that Griffin was to be “bunked.” In the afternoon, Douglas, faithfully prowling near his comrade’s prison, had seen Griffin, splendidly unrepentant, at the high window of his condemned cell. Griffin had smiled. Griffin, evidently, didn’t give a damn for the whole business. The house thrilled. Of such stuff heroes were made. It remained to be seen, in the opinion of the critical, how Griffin would shape in the supreme test of the scaffold on which he would probably be birched before the assembled school. The betting was all on Griffin’s being a sportsman.

There followed a day of suspense. Consultations between masters were noticed. Selby, for a whole hour, had been closeted with the Head. Old fat Leeming had been sent for at last to join their deliberations. What had Leeming to do with it? Other housemasters had been summoned to the room beneath the clock and emerged with unusually serious faces. Who was this Griffin that his fate should shake the foundations of Olympus? The Head, indeed, showed his seriousness more clearly than all the others. He arrived late in chapel, where the service had waited on his coming: he stalked up the aisle, as full of omen as any black crow, with his pale seamed face and his shaggy black beard, and his arms crossed behind his back beneath the skirts of his gown. From his high seat at the end of the chancel he scowled on the whole school as if he hated it. At supper a message was read out. The school would assemble by classes in the Big Schoolroom at noon. Poor old Griff. . . . The sergeant, it was said, had been seen binding a new birch in the porter’s lodge.

It was all very romantic and thrilling. Edwin, conscious now for the first time of the extreme foolhardiness of his racecourse adventure, felt himself a greater dog than ever. And then, when the stage was set, and the audience attuned to an atmosphere of tragedy by so much thunder-weather, Griffin, from whom the glamour of the heroic had been gradually fading in the shame of his captivity, achieved the dramatic. He bolted. With a ladder of knotted sheets he climbed down the waterspout and disappeared into open country. Griffin lived somewhere in Kent. In half a day he would reach home.

For Selby’s house it was a great morning. Edwin, in spite of his hatred of Griffin, shared in the general elation. Such private feuds were small concerns in the face of the common enemy. Douglas was flown with insolence.

“I knew old Griff would do them,” he said. “By God . . . that’s a man if you like. It’s the nastiest knock old Selby’s had in his life. Think of it . . . a chap with a weak heart like old Griff shinning down a waterspout!”

Edwin wondered if the meeting in the Big Schoolroom would be off, or whether, perhaps, it would be postponed and Griffin hauled back from the bosom of his family to go through with it.

“You silly ass,” said Douglas. “Of course they can’t fetch him back. He’s done them brown.”

But the morning went on without any alteration in the programme. At twelve o’clock the solemn procession began: the whole black-coated population of St. Luke’s filtering through narrow corridors and the wide folding doors into the big Schoolroom. The whole business was impressive; for nobody spoke and no sound came from the crowd but the drag of slowly-moving feet and arms that brushed one another. They were like a flock of sheep driven away from market on a narrow road between dusty hedges, for none of them knew what was coming. Rumour was busy with whispers.

Griffin had been found in a ditch with his leg broken and had been hauled back to fulfil his sentence. Like Monmouth, Edwin thought. Griffin, in company with the pale skivvy from “D” had been arrested by the police at Waterloo. Other rumours, less credible, as, for instance, that Cleaver, meeting a jockey friend of his in a little pub called the Grenadier in the Downs Road, had walked into a taproom full of School House bloods on Sunday morning. Indeed, these were strenuous days.

The school settled down. The Head, lean, crow-like, flapped the wings of his gown. He seemed to find it difficult to make a beginning, and while he waited for a word his left arm twitched. Then he began. It was obvious that his pause had been nothing more than a rhetorical trick designed to fix the attention of an audience already thrilled by uncertainty. He wasn’t at a loss for words at all. He boomed, he ranted, he bellowed, he rolled his “r’s” and his eyes. The masters, sitting at their high desks, remained discreet and rather bored . . . all except Mr. Leeming, to whom the orator appeared as an inspired prophet of God. For the subject of his harangue was Mr. Leeming’s own: Impurity; and the whole meeting the immediate result of Mr. Leeming’s investigations. The curtain had gone up with a most theatrical flourish upon the Great Smut Row.

The essence of the Head’s speech was a general threat. Certain things had been discovered; certain further inquiries were to be made; the fate of a large number of boys lay in the balance; more details were known, in all probability, than any of the victims suspected; to the youngest among them he made a special appeal; confession, immediate confession, would be the better part of valour; he looked to every member of the school to aid him in the task, the sacred duty, of purging St. Luke’s of this abominable thing. Indeed it is possible that he meant what he said. His port was bad, and he knew better than to drink it; but the heady vintage that he brewed from sonorous words knocked him over every time.

The meeting dissolved in silence. For the moment the school was impressed, less by the gravity of the charge than by its indefiniteness. The same evening brought tales of segregated suspects, of tearful and terrible interviews in the rooms of housemasters, of prefects suspended: of a veritable reign of terror—_lettres de cachet_ and the rest of it—in Citizen Leeming’s house. “D” dormitory and the others in charge of the languid Selby suffered least. When evening came to set a term to rumours only two were missing—the black Douglas, and an insignificant inky creature of the name of Hearn, whom the threats of the headmaster had driven to some grubby confession. An atmosphere of immense relief fell upon the awed dormitory and found vent in a memorable “rag.”

But Edwin did not sleep. There was no reason why he should not have slept; but he couldn’t help feeling, against reason, that in some way he might be dragged into the toils of vengeance; that some peculiar combination of circumstances might implicate him in the business, even though he had never had anything to do with it. Somehow appearances might be against him. In particular he became suspicious of Mr. Leeming’s attentions to him in the past. He imagined that the wily creature had suspected him, and tried, for that reason, to find a way into his confidence. What other explanation could there be? His avoidance of Mr. Leeming could only have increased the suspicion. Plainly, he was done for.

He remembered, with a perilous clearness, words that had passed between them to which he had given no thought. Now they appeared terribly significant. “You and Ingleby are great friends, Widdup,” Leeming had said only a few days before. “Quite inseparable. I’ve often seen you walking up and down the quad at night. I wonder what you have in common, eh?” Now Edwin knew why he wondered. And Widdup, like a damned fool, had said that they slept alongside each other. Supposing old Leeming imagined. . . . It was too bad. He lay there staring at the rafters and wondering what could be done. He would like to write to his mother about it. But a man couldn’t write to his mother about a thing like that. And his father wouldn’t understand. In the end he determined that the only thing he could possibly do was to go and see Leeming next day and assure him that there was nothing wrong with their friendship. “And then,” he thought, “the old beast won’t believe me. He’ll think that I’ve gone to him because I have a guilty conscience, and he’ll suspect me more than ever. He’ll go and make all sorts of inquiries and something will come out that will be difficult to explain.” How could anything come out when there wasn’t anything wrong? He could not give a reasonable answer to this question, and yet he was afraid. From this spiritual purgatory of his own making he passed into an uneasy sleep.

Next morning, in the middle of early school, the sergeant entered with a message for Mr. Cleaver, and waited while the master read it.

“Ingleby,” he said at last, “Mr. Selby wants to speak to you. You had better go at once.”

Edwin packed up his books with trembling hands. He went very white. It seemed to him that the eyes of the whole form were on him. They were thinking, “Hallo, here’s another of them. Ingleby! Who would have thought it?” He heard the footsteps of the sergeant go echoing down the corridor as steadily and implacably as the fate that was overtaking him. He only wanted to get it over. As soon as he was out of the classroom he ran, for every moment of uncertainty was torture to him. He ran across the quad and climbed the stairs, breathless, to the low room still steeped in stale honeydew, where his life at St. Luke’s had begun and must now so abruptly end. Mr. Selby sat at his desk waiting for him. When Edwin entered the room he looked suddenly embarrassed and fingered an envelope on his desk.

“Ingleby, I sent for you urgently . .”

“Yes, sir.”

“It probably came as a shock to you . . . or perhaps you were prepared?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you must pull yourself together. You can’t guess what it is?”

“No, sir.” . . . But he could. It came to him suddenly, huge and annihilating, swamping in the space of a second all the uneasiness and terror that had shadowed him in the night. Those things were nothing . . . nothing.

“Oh, sir . . . my mother . . .”

“Yes. . . It’s your mother, Ingleby. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Very sorry. . . .”

“Tell me, sir. She’s dead. Oh . . . she’s dead . . . ?”

Mr. Selby unfolded the telegram although he already knew its contents.

“No. It’s not so bad as that. But she’s ill . . . very ill . . .”

“I knew. . . . The minute you spoke I knew, sir. . . .”

“You had better catch the eight o’clock train at the Downs station. You need only take your little bag. You can get it from the matron!’

“Yes, sir. . . .”

“Have you any money?” Mr. Selby almost smiled to see him so eager to go.

“No, sir. . . . Only about eightpence.”

“You can’t go without money, you know. Here’s a sovereign. Now, cheer up, there’s a good fellow. Cheer up!” He smiled wanly, and Edwin burst into tears. Mr. Selby laid an awkward hand on his shoulder. It was very decent of him, Edwin thought, as he stood with his fists in his eyes, one of them clutching the sovereign that Selby had given him.

“Thank you, sir . . . but it’s awful, it’s awful. . . .”

“Of course, of course. . . .”

He shepherded Edwin out of the room. When the boy had gone, Mr. Selby, an unemotional man, tore the telegram into small pieces and placed them, with a confirmed bachelor’s tidiness, in the waste-paper basket. Then he lit a pipe of honeydew; and the blue smoke from the bowl together with the brown smoke that he expelled from his nostrils shone cheerily in the morning sun that beat through the latticed window on to a woman’s photograph standing on the desk in front of him. For a moment he gazed at the faded image. He had not thought of her for years.