Crescendo Read online

  “Mr. Richard Cressey,” began the Clerk.

  There was a general greeting to which Richard replied, then the Clerk read out Richard’s academic qualifications and the course of his career hitherto, from the top paper of a pile in front of him. Similar piles lay in front of every Governor, and they all perused the top paper carefully. At this Richard’s heart warmed to them. He thought them an admirable crosssection of a modern industrial community, all on different social levels of wealth, speech and dress, but all honest persons, trying to do their duty to the school according to their several lights.

  “I shall only deserve to get this job,” thought Richard, “if I answer the questions with the most careful honesty, so as to reveal myself as I really am.”

  Immediately he felt calm and even happy, rather as he did when he sat down to write a necessary letter to a pupil’s parent, something important and difficult but useful and well within his powers. All he had to do was to think as hard as he could and translate his thought accurately into simple words. These people would understand him.

  “Well now, Mr. Cressey,” began the Chairman in the thin voice of old age: “This is a very glowing testimonial about you that we’ve had from your present headmaster.”

  Richard coloured with pleasure.

  “It seems you like teaching.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Richard.

  “We all have some questions we should like to ask Mr. Cressey, no doubt,” continued the Chairman, looking interrogatively round the table.

  “Yes, I have one!” cried the left-winger immediately, his long nose quivering, his fanatical eyes flashing, as he bent forward. “Why are you applying for this post, Mr. Cressey?”

  “I should very much like to be headmaster of a school of this kind,” said Richard thoughtfully. “There is much useful work to be done through such schools, and I should like to have a hand in it.”

  “And you’d like the increase in salary too, no doubt?” cried the left-winger.

  “That too would be agreeable,” said Richard, smiling.

  The left-winger snorted but subsided.

  “Why did you come to these parts at all, Mr. Cressey?” said the Old Boy on his left. “You’re not a native of these parts, you see, are you? Why did you come to Ashworth Grammar School, eh?”

  “I lived here as a child when my father was a minister in Ashworth,” explained Richard. “I felt an inclination to return to the West Riding.”

  “And how do you like it now you’ve got here, eh?”

  “It interests me keenly,” said Richard.

  “What do you think about our dialect here, then?” said an Old Boy from across the table.

  “Historically it is a fascinating study,” began Richard. “It is a survival of old speech, as you know, not a modern corruption.”

  “Aye, but what about the boys using it?”

  “I should not tolerate any grammatical errors in their speech,” said Richard, considering. “A Yorkshire intonation is perfectly natural and permissible, of course, but it might militate against their success in certain professional spheres. I think probably it is best to put that point to them clearly. I ought perhaps to say,” he added, smiling, “that I am all on the side of good manners. I very much dislike rudeness masquerading as sincerity.”

  “Well—you’ve got your work cut out with these lads,” returned the Old Boy sharply. He grinned, however, and Richard did not feel him to be unfriendly.

  “Your subject is English,” began one of the official nominees in a prim, precise style. “How will that influence your allocation of time in the school?”

  “I should like to give a good deal of time to teaching,” said Richard frankly. “But I’m fully aware of the importance of administration in a school, and I should put my duties as headmaster first.”

  “How many hours a week are you prepared to devote to the job?” snapped the left-winger.

  “As many as are necessary for the proper conduct of the school,” snapped back Richard with a smile.

  “Have you ever had any trouble with discipline, Mr. Cressey?” said the second official nominee.

  “No,” said Richard laconically.

  “Would you insist on the boys wearing their school caps out of school?” said the Old Boy on the left.

  “Yes.”

  “What would you do if they disobeyed, eh?”

  “I should take all the usual disciplinary steps—and,” said Richard, looking round at them sternly: “I should expect support from my Governors.”

  There was a pause. The Governors exchanged glances-Richard thought, of a not unfavourable kind.

  “Mr. Cressey,” said the Chairman in his thin old tones: “You are thirty-seven. If you were appointed headmaster here, you would find on your staff one or two men over sixty years old. How would you tackle that problem?”

  “With consideration, I hope,” said Richard. “I would discuss any alterations I proposed making, thoroughly with all the staff, before I took action. But the headmaster’s decision must be final, since the responsibility is his.”

  The Chairman nodded thoughtfully.

  “Mr. Cressey,” broke in the former schoolmistress in deep Oxfordian tones: “Do you enjoy good health?”

  Ah, trust a woman’s eye on a physical question, thought Richard with a pang. For the thousandth time he wished that his large grey eyes, his clear pale cheek, could be metamorphosed into a beefy stare, a florid tan. He considered. Of course he lacked the animal vigour of, say, the man Barraclough. On the other hand, he was rarely ill.

  “Yes,” he said at length, “I do.” Seeing that his hesitation had produced a look of doubt on the faces round the table, he felt himself entitled to add: “It is certainly seven years since I had to consult a doctor.”

  The faces brightened.

  “And what was the diagnosis then, Mr. Cressey?”

  “Just a touch of influenza,” said Richard.

  The faces brightened still further.

  “May I ask what your hobbies are, Mr. Cressey?” bayed the former schoolmistress in a friendly tone.

  “Oh, all the arts,” said Richard. “Music, drama, painting, films. And to a certain extent, walking. I take my longer holidays as far as possible abroad.”

  The schoolmistress nodded, smiling.

  “Mr. Cressey,” said Arnold Barraclough suddenly in a very loud tone: “What would you do if——”

  Richard turned to him. To his astonishment he saw that the man was furiously angry. His shrewd kindly face was crimson, his heavy nostrils dilated; the square hands protruding from the sleeves of his admirably cut grey suit and fine white shirt were screwing up the sheet of paper which held Richard’s qualifications, with savage strength.

  “What would you do if you found a boy or group of boys in the school encouraging improper behaviour?” he shouted.

  Richard was annoyed. He hated being shouted at and particularly disliked any illiberal frenzy on sexual questions.

  “I should certainly never dramatise the matter,” he said coldly. “These things are normal in small boys during a certain phase.”

  “Oh, you’d take it lightly,” said Barraclough grimly. His eyes were positively red and sparkling with rage, Richard noticed; really they looked quite extraordinary.

  “No, I should not,” began Richard, still more annoyed. “But——”

  “Have you ever played any games, Mr. Cressey?” said Barraclough, still in the same loud, brutal tone.

  “I have played almost every game in my time,” said Richard stiffly. “Except golf and squash.”

  “Ever do any good by it?”

  “In what sense?”

  “Ever play for your house, or your school or your university?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not married, I believe, Mr. Cressey?”

  “No,” said Richard. He hesitated, wondering whether he might perhaps venture to say: “Not yet,” but decided against it—he had no right to presuppose Dorothea’s
consent.

  “Have you any intention of marrying?”

  There was a movement of protest round the table.

  “Mr. Chairman, I hardly think——” objected the schoolmistress.

  The Chairman, coughing, began: “Perhaps, Mr. Barraclough, that hardly comes within our——”

  Richard interrupted. He was extremely angry and had turned very pale.

  “Nothing is settled yet,” he said.

  “I thought not,” muttered Barraclough. He glared directly into Richard’s eyes, his whole face expressing contempt and hate.

  The tenour of the last few questions seemed clear to Richard; they were meant to show him as feeble, sapless, morally effete, and therefore quite unsuited to be in charge of boys. He resented these insulting implications strongly, and debated with himself whether or not to voice his resentment. But after all, he had come to this interview to be questioned. His habitual fairness and modesty restrained him; he remained silent, but looked round urgently at the other Governors, hoping for a decent question to which he could give an honourable reply and thus reinstate himself in their good opinion. But some of the Governors returned his glance doubtfully, while others looked down in an embarrassed way and doodled on their notes. The Chairman coughed, looked around and collected his colleagues’ glances.

  “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Cressey,” he said in a dismissing tone.

  Richard rose, gave a quick formal bow, and left the room.

  “They gave you a good long dose,” said Piers enviously when he returned to the library.

  “You need not be troubled,” said Richard coldly. “They will not appoint me.”

  “Really? I’m surprised. I thought you had it in the bag. But you can usually tell how the interview’s going, I agree. Turned against you, did they? Any tips you can give me?” said Piers with unconcealed relief.

  Richard was silent.

  For the next hour he would not allow himself to think about his disappointment; he concentrated on maintaining a decent appearance of composure. He sat in an armchair in a relaxed attitude, and turned the leaves of the week’s Times Literary Supplement, which he had read before, with a nonchalant air, while the other candidates came and went between study and library. He presumed that Piers would now receive the appointment—certainly he himself had lost it. All the same his heart beat fast and he had difficulty in remaining in his chair when the Clerk at length entered the room. To whom would he turn?

  The Clerk looked towards one of the younger men and said: “The Governors would like to see Mr. Seldon again, gentlemen.”

  3

  The hand-shaking, the goodbyes, the playful mutual commiserations, the walk to the bus and the journey back to Ashworth with some of his colleagues were really torture. The younger applicants took their rejection philosophically; they would apply again elsewhere, they had time before them. Piers was extremely, almost uncontrollably, angry and disappointed; like Richard he had thought himself sure of the job once Richard was rejected. Richard could not help remembering their conversation before the interviews, when he had voiced the hope that Arnold Barraclough would prove a good judge of character. An unfriendly observer, he thought sardonically, might consider that Barraclough had proved too good a judge for the pair of them. Naturally he kept this thought to himself.

  At last he was alone in his rooms and able to allow his disappointment expression. He paced up and down with his light, slightly uneven step, turning quickly in the confined space, while an immense flood of bitterness rolled agonisingly through his body. He found the situation too painful to be borne with any pretence of equanimity. The man the Governors had chosen was, perhaps, the best of the younger bunch—on that point Richard was prepared to grant him the benefit of the doubt. But he was younger than Richard, with far less teaching experience and a much inferior degree. If the Governors had chosen Piers their choice would have been less of a personal slight to Richard. Piers’ degree was good; his knowledge of the school of course much more extensive, his teaching experience longer, than Richard’s. The choice of such a man, though it would have been a serious mistake in Richard’s view because of Piers’ cynical and ambiguous character, would have been a natural mistake, a justifiable choice, for which many reasons could be offered. But to choose young Seldon!

  “I ought to be glad for the boys’ sake, that they’ll have a cheerful honest young man instead of Piers who is tainted by defeat,” thought Richard.

  He made one of his customary mental efforts, tried to compel himself to feel the decent gladness he postulated. But he failed. To be rejected for that insignificant, inexperienced lad, who had hardly been distinguishable from the other three young candidates! What on earth would Richard’s present headmaster think? Only some prejudice against his person could have rejected Richard in favour of young Seldon. And of course, thought Richard angrily, it was clear what that prejudice was. The unlucky question of the schoolmistress about his health had brought it on the tapis, he supposed, and the Barraclough man, hearty well-fed animal that he was, had picked it up and high-lighted it and tossed it round the table, and the Governors had made the usual conventional response. Once again Richard was turned down, rejected, because he had prevented his baby brother from falling downstairs and spoiled his own spine in doing so.

  “It’s been the same tune all the time,” said Richard to himself in anguish.

  He had heard this phrase in a wartime revue and always remembered it because it seemed so relevant to his case, but never had it seemed so bitterly, terribly relevant as today.

  For today, for the first time, the disadvantage of his physique had invaded his own chosen, intellectual sphere. From him that hath not, shall be taken even that which he hath, remembered Richard bitterly. It could be borne that he was a mediocre performer in the physical world, it could be borne that he was slight and plain; it could be borne, though Richard winced at the thought, that he was not even considered as an entrant in the lists of love. But that his professional standing should also be adversely affected was not to be endured. His innermost stronghold, his ultimate hope and confidence, his pride and joy in his good brain, his soundly based learning, his rational powers, his professional ability—all this was pierced, broken, tumbled. It was too much. What was the use of his long years of cheerful outward acceptance? (The struggles to maintain which had in early life been so painfully severe.) His so-to-say “sporting” behaviour? His firm rejection of all jealousy and resentment? His victory over all the envious impulses of his baser self? All useless; such moral victories counted for nothing beside a florid cheek, a straight spine. Why try any more? Why not let himself slip into the jaundiced envy which—with, Richard felt sure, much less cause—Piers showed? Head-masterships and marriage were clearly not for Richard Cressey; they were mere castles in the air for him, groundless as a rainbow and as evanescent. He must return to reality, content himself with a lonely, sterile life, an undistinguished and merely moderately useful career. But he could not so content himself. He could not! He struck his fist hard into the palm of his other hand, beside himself with grief and rage.

  As he wheeled angrily about the room, the clock on the mantelpiece caught his eyes and reminded him of his engagement with Dorothea. They were to dine early, he remembered, so as to catch the opening sequences of a film.

  For a moment he laid his hand on the telephone. He was no fit companion for any woman that evening; like a wounded animal he wished only to lick his sores alone in the obscurity of his lair; besides, all that notion of love and marriage was nonsense, nonsense! He coloured with shame to think that he had ever for a moment entertained such a preposterous, such a presumptuous, such a really wrong, idea.

  But presently he took his hand from the instrument again. It was not in his nature deliberately to cause humiliation to any living being, he hoped, especially not to a woman, especially not to a woman for whom he had experienced such tender and protective feelings as he had for Dorothea. Besides, the only telephone
in the house where Dorothea lived was her landlady’s telephone; it stood downstairs in the hall, and when Mrs. Eastwood had summoned her guest to the instrument, she was apt to hang around in the middle distance, pretending not to listen to the conversation and hoping to be told about it in full when it closed. No, Richard could not subject Dorothea to the humiliation of such a public cancellation by her escort.

  With angry, jerky movements he shaved and dressed; he was, he felt, defeated by life, but he would pretend not to be, he would keep up these minor defiances, these minor outposts against despair, as long as he could. He hurried off to the bus; by swift walking at either end of the journey, he contrived to reach the Hart just as the Town Hall clock struck the hour; he was not late.

  IV

  Dorothea Dean, Shop assistant

  1

  All the dean family were tall, healthy, determined, unsentimental people, reflected Dorothea, gazing with eager question into the rather spotty mirror which was all that Mrs. Eastwood provided.

  Her own back was as straight as a ramrod, her head was always high, she walked down the Ashworth streets with a brisk decided step which set her skirts swinging as rhythmically as if she were marching to a band; her skin was clear, her teeth white, her flesh warm and firm; she enjoyed every minute of life, she was never tired.

  Her father, whose enlarged photograph, in dress uniform with medals, hung on the wall beside the mirror, had been a “regular” soldier, sergeant-major in his Yorkshire regiment, killed marshalling his men on the beach at Dunkirk when his youngest child was only five; but though Dorothea did not remember him, he looked to her every inch a fine stalwart sergeant-major, with all that rank implies of disciplinary capacity in his large stern features. His close-cut hair betrayed the merest hint of the crisp dark curls which Dorothea had inherited from him.