Payment Deferred by C. S. Forester

Author:C. S. Forester
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Rich people--Crimes against--Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2025-12-18T22:08:02+00:00

IX

After this epis­ode mat­ters went for some time ex­actly as Mr. Marble would have wished. John’s ap­plic­a­tion to enter Syden­ham Col­lege was fa­vour­ably re­ceived, and he went there without fur­ther de­mur. He was not quite six­teen. There was more trouble about Win­nie. Mr. Marble ob­tained from schol­ast­ic agents a list of all the more ex­pens­ive girls’ schools, but his en­deav­ours to enter Win­nie in one of them were baulked for some time. They dis­played a not un­nat­ur­al re­luct­ance to re­ceive in their midst a girl of nearly fif­teen who hailed from an ad­dress in a du­bi­ous street in a south Lon­don sub­urb, and who had been edu­cated so far at a Coun­cil school and at a sec­ond­ary school. But at last a Berkshire school ac­cep­ted her—it was in­cid­ent­ally the most ex­pens­ive of all—and then there was a flur­ry­ing and a scur­ry­ing to get ready the vast out­fit that the rules of the school de­man­ded. There was a spe­cial type of gym­nas­i­um frock to be ob­tained, and day clothes and even­ing clothes and, crown­ing glory of all, a rid­ing-habit and boots. Mr. Marble was de­lighted. He cer­tainly seemed prouder of Win­nie’s out­fit than she was her­self.

And so, after East­er, the same day that Mr. and Mrs. Marble, he dressed in his very best to im­press the oth­er girls’ par­ents and the oth­er girls, she rather tear­ful, with her ap­pear­ance not jus­ti­fy­ing the amount spent on it, saw Win­nie off from Pad­ding­ton, John put on the blue and black cap of Syden­ham Col­lege and set off on his two-mile walk thith­er, not feel­ing at all happy, with all the mys­ter­ies of Rugby foot­ball and the pre­vail­ing etiquette of the new school be­fore him.

True, his fath­er had been jolly de­cent to him lately. He had giv­en him nearly all the pock­et-money he wanted, while in a tiny lockup gar­age at the end of Mal­colm Road there re­posed the gi­ant two-cyl­in­der mo­tor-bi­cycle that his heart had yearned for. John had av­er­aged a hun­dred miles a day on it for the last week, de­light­ing in learn­ing its mech­an­ic­al whims, mak­ing gal­lant and oc­ca­sion­ally suc­cess­ful at­tempts to climb hills in “top,” and find­ing all the won­der­ful bits of coun­try that lie near Lon­don just out of reach of the or­din­ary bi­cycle. It was a good way of for­get­ting say­ing good­bye to the old school, where he had been happy for nearly five years—and say­ing good­bye to his old friends, too.

John was vi­ol­ently un­happy. It was not al­to­geth­er the new school that made him so, not by any means. It was af­fairs at home. His fath­er was drunk five nights out of sev­en, and that was the least of his troubles. Most times Mr. Marble’s drunk­en­ness did not dis­turb the rest of the fam­ily as much as might be ex­pec­ted, for on those oc­ca­sions he kept him­self very strictly to him­self—shut up in the draw­ing-room gaz­ing out over the back­yard. Only twice had John to in­ter­fere act­ively between his moth­er and his fath­er, fear­ing that he would

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.