The trouble with life was that it would go on. Especially when it oughtn’t. Ruthlessly it continued until, more ruthlessly, it ceased. There was no way as with a gramophone to lift the arm, remove the needle from the disc, and grant respite from the din.
Morgan tried to sleep, but his body had the uncooperative habit of awakening. It was indecent to wake in his father’s house after evacuation from the Academy and find that the world had not ceased. Vehicles were braking outside the windows. Someone downstairs was baking bread. Throngs of people were at that moment going about their daily affairs with no notion, no notion at all, of what had occurred. Even his father had gone in to the firm, or so Morgan learned when hunger forced him from the bedroom. Betty informed him that his father would not return until teatime. She offered food but no further instructions for what he ought to do with himself.
The day carried on carrying on. Then, after the night, another day broke and persisted. His father, disturbed by what Morgan had witnessed yet exasperated by what he saw as Morgan’s propensity to involve himself in other people’s melodramas, looked into schools for him; none were satisfactory, for reasons Morgan never bothered to discover. His father contacted the man who had educated him in his own youth. The man, though ancient, had come to dinner, made Morgan’s acquaintance, and apparently agreed to tutor Morgan pro tem. Easter came and went. Morgan refused to go to church, and his father, lacking the will he once possessed, did not insist. A perplexing series of letters arrived: from his Housemaster, announcing Morgan’s expulsion from the Academy; from Burton-Lee, retracting the expulsion; from Nathan, enclosing a newspaper clipping about the disaster, which Morgan burned upon seeing the photograph; from Laurie, chattering frantically about inconsequential items; from his Housemaster again, informing them of Morgan’s possible reinstatement; from his Housemaster, advising the probable lack of reinstatement; and finally from Burton-Lee, declaring officially that the Academy welcomed Morgan back should he be well enough to return at the end of the holidays.
Morgan’s father looked to him for direction. Should he return to the Academy? Should he be educated at home by the decrepit tutor? Should he enroll at a frankly questionable crammer somewhere in Berkshire? Should he leave school directly and apprentice at the firm?
As protest against life’s obscene continuance, Morgan essayed no opinion. His father denounced him as indolent, spoilt, and obstreperous. His sisters arrived in serial to berate and cajole him into taking some decision. He refused. And still the days relentlessly continued to break, meals continued to appear, baths continued to be drawn, and newspapers continued to arrive full of apparently essential matters. His father’s physician spitefully declared Morgan’s shoulder much improved and ordered him to remove the wrappings and follow a course of stretching and strengthening thrice daily. This tedious item from Harley Street also commanded him to take fresh air for a minimum of two hours each day, to attend at least five social gatherings in the fortnight remaining to the holidays, and on no account to shirk proper school.
Morgan loathed the man. What’s more, this verdict had the outrageous effect of galvanizing his father, who summoned Morgan to his study, not the study Morgan associated with the man, but the alien chamber in the newfangled London house. As paterfamilias, he announced that he had taken a decision: Morgan would return to St. Stephen’s Friday next. He would hear no more of the matter. Not only did he expect Morgan to follow his physician’s advice to the letter—something he would confirm daily—but he also expected Morgan to pull himself together in short order, to apply himself to his studies, to play his cricket manfully, and forthwith to keep his nose disentangled from matters that did not concern him. That was the paternal word. He had had more than enough of Morgan’s self-indulgence. He had put up with it out of consideration for Morgan’s difficulties losing his mother and growing so very many inches so quickly, but he informed Morgan that his indulgence was at an end. He advised Morgan not to test him. It was time for Morgan to stand up and be who he was. That was all.