In the Making (Penguin Modern Classics) by Green G. F

Author:Green, G. F. [Green, G. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141970776
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

An Excursion

Happiness lies in motion. It chiefly consists in giving something which we possess and having someone willing to receive. Sorrow is static, for then we find nothing in ourselves worth the giving and no one to take it. A loss widens in us like a wound; we carry a small death. For Randal, Felton was no more than a facet of his necessity to give and to be received. He became for him simply a mirror of his want. In those first empty weeks of the Lent term Randal began to make demands which Felton could not accept. Then he brooded over Felton’s least action, exploring the reaches of his suffering with intense preoccupation and if his indulgence in these moods began deliberately, soon he no longer controlled them. Felton grew ashamed of Randal’s reproach and secrecy which seemed to involve him before the whole school. He no longer desired anything that Randal might offer. For a time he had been amused and his vanity satisfied, but now he had little further interest and imperceptibly he drew back by allowing no sign or word to be added by either of them. Besides, he had other things to do. Randal found that nothing moved whilst the unfurling leaves, the swelling grass, the sound of running water taunted and shamed his passivity. The time for happiness, had it ever been possible, was gone. Inasmuch as he knew this Randal was no longer a child.

The days went on. Behind and near the school and the flint road, the hills gave out the throaty smell of growth, of bud and stalk and moss-choked earth, of rabbit-bitten grass and peeled stick, feeding on wind and sun, until the hands were smeared with its smell as pungent as blood. He could do nothing. In the corridors and classrooms with banging doors, the library and landing and stairs, the dormitory and the terrace, the playing-fields swept bare by the breath-like wind, the paths where he walked and the windows where he leaned, there was nowhere for him to go or be. He forgot more than he remembered. The Linen Room, because of the Hallowe’en night and of that remote time which seemed now to be legendary, was especially avoided. There was also another reason. Two weeks after the term began Barbara had left suddenly and on the same day as one of the masters. They were said to be living in a labourer’s cottage at the end of the hills. It was said they had been forced to leave. They were as good as dead or at most ghosts who could be rumoured to have been seen in an outlying village and who were hurrying although there was no rain and the sun shone, or who had stopped and spoken and had been daringly heard out. They and their story were soon dropped, and particularly by Randal.

He saw Felton. They met in the corridors or washing hands or returning at times from the playing-fields. They

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