The Young Desire It by Kenneth Mackenzie Page A

difference was hemispheric: climate and culture and tradition. And then, of course, I smoked a pipe and drank whisky, which made me feel very much their senior. It was quite deceptive, all that. I don’t even quite get it now. If I had read more Latin and Greek than they would ever hear of, that didn’t concern them. But it did concern me. It was part of my manhood; they were young ruffians of boys. Yet—somehow—I never quite believed that. Couldn’t.’
    That was the kind of confession a man makes when his emotions are no longer involved with what he is considering. At the time, and in spite of himself, his emotions very surely were involved, in a way he could not understand. Regret for the past combined with fear of the present and uncertainty as to the future, prevented him from observing himself objectively, even for a moment. Perhaps to have said he feared the present would have been to put it too definitely. Yet there was certainly fear of some sort at the root of his dislike for the boys, the School, and the country which had borne them all. Even the stomachic geniality brought about by a few whiskies in his room downstairs, conversing amiably with Waters, could not dissipate it.
    However, he paraded in great style, feeling the indefinite, angry satisfaction that always stimulated him when he walked among them and felt them move out of his way. At the end of the dormitory the new Captain of School, a choice cricketer and a good classical scholar (one of his own creations, he thought pleasantly) sat on the House captain’s bed quietly conversing. Penworth went to shake hands with him. He was, among the boys, a hero; and as a hero he was a fellow to be reckoned with, even by an aloof and scholarly Junior Housemaster.
    â€˜Well, Fairfax?’ Penworth said kindly; and asked him another question in Greek, which made him frown and laugh.
    â€˜I’m afraid the holidays have made me forget all that, sir.’
    â€˜Oh well. Soon pick it up again, you know,’ Penworth said confidentially; and there was an echo in his mind of his own voice querulously suggesting to Waters at the high table, ‘Need we talk shop so soon? After all, there’s always to-morrow.’ And here he was—the habitual pedagogue already, eyes, voice and smile hinting yet deprecating the intellectual intimacy implied in his words. This sort of intimacy was inevitable with Fairfax and uncompromising after all.
    He discussed holidays with him, thinking secretly as he watched his lively, good-looking face that he was probably as mature as any of his own younger companions of the south coast summer; and as himself—almost. They talked of cricket prospects, and of the new year’s eight. Fairfax would row stroke again…
    â€˜Stroke bene factum,’ said Penworth suddenly; and having with such coy suavity put himself once more in the secure, austerely amiable position of a classics Master conversing with a very promising scholar, he stood up, nodded, and walked away.
    â€˜Oh, he’s really not bad,’ Fairfax said, replying to some warm criticism of the House captain’s. ‘It’s our own fault if he seems like a stranger.’
    Penworth went downstairs. Waters was sprawling back in the big study chair, with his feet up on the table, holding a full tumbler in one hand, reading with myopic concentration.
    â€˜How are the little ones?’ he asked. ‘Why aren’t you drinking?’
    â€˜You forget,’ Penworth said severely. ‘I’m on duty. As for the little ones—you’d better come up and see for yourself.’
    His own room seemed to him wretchedly apathetic and empty. Light glared boldly from the porcelain-shaded globe, picked out sharp highlights on inkwells, pens, glasses and the polished table top, and fell with a blind angularity upon the floor and the white walls. Shadow was as sharp as the light. He stood for a moment staring at the