It's Too Late Now by A. A. Milne

Author:A. A. Milne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2017-09-20T09:42:21+00:00

FREE-LANCE

1903–1906

Chapter Ten

I

We sat one August evening on a garden seat at the end of the croquet-lawn, Father and I, facing the less Elizabethan wing of the house. Father had his notebook out, and was checking figures: adding this up, subtracting that, and telling me the result. Twiddling the head of a croquet-mallet between my feet, my eyes on the ground, I said ‘Oh, yes,’ and ‘Yes,’ and ‘I see’ in a reserved, rather obstinate voice. We were settling my future.

Father was convinced now that I was not good enough for the Civil Service. If there was a doubt in his mind, it was whether I was good enough to be a schoolmaster, to carry on this great preparatory school which he had built up. Still, he would give me the chance. A year in Germany studying the latest educational systems, a year or two at a public-school, then to Streete Court, first as assistant-master, then as junior partner, finally in full control: he had it all worked out in his notebook: the salary I should get at first, my share of income as partner, the allowance to be paid to him when he retired, the compensation to be made to my brothers for inheriting the whole patrimony, the value of the inheritance in fifteen years’ time when I should be my own master, all obligations discharged. Blue-black ink, red ink, little ticks in pencils, as he checked each item: a labour of love and pride and hope that morning in his study while I fooled about on the fashionable beach with the prettiest of the many pretty visitors to Westgate.

‘Well, dear, what do you think of it?’

‘It’s all right. It’s very generous.’ I said it reluctantly. The prettiest of the pretty visitors lived in London. I was going to Germany. It seemed wrong.

‘Well, you must think it over. I don’t want to hurry you.’

In front of us was the long north wing, with the big schoolroom which Father had added to it when first Streete Court had climbed beyond that obstinate twenty-mark where it had stayed so long (and, it seemed, so hopelessly) . . . into the thirties and then the forties . . . and then the fifties: until now it could hold its own with all the fashionable schools of Thanet, this dream of the little Kilburn schoolmaster, B.A. (Lond.), with his old-fashioned clothes and his old-fashioned beard. He leant back, his notebook on his knees, looking over the quiet lawns to all the ugly schools through which he had struggled on his way to this loved place, and again he was on his knees to God, as he had been every night of his life, in gratitude for the fulfilment to which he had been led.

‘Father?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘I think I–I think I–I’d like to try to be a writer.’

‘It’s for you to decide.’

‘Yes . . . I think I have decided.’

Father closed the notebook and put it back in his pocket. How much of heartache was hidden

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