‘Give these maps out, Shackleton and Lister.’
‘Why are you so late this morning, sir?’ inquired Grimshaw.
‘Shut up and sit down, Grimshaw,’ said Jonathan, offhand. ‘I’ve no time for whimsies from you this morning.’
‘Have you had bad news, sir?’ inquired Shackleton, who as top of the class had a certain official standing.
The image of Morcar, white-haired, his face lined, distorted, twitching, his eyes full of perplexity and anguish, sitting limply on the edge of a dishevelled bed, rose before Jonathan’s eyes, and he replied shortly:
‘Yes.’
At this from mere decency all the class fell silent except the irrepressible Grimshaw, who cried: ‘What’s a whimsy, sir?’
‘Look it up. Get a move on with those maps, boys.’
‘I haven’t got a dictionary, sir.’
‘Sutcliffe, have you got a dictionary? Lend it to Grimshaw for two minutes, please.’
‘I’ve found whimsy, sir.’
‘Then come right out here and read the definition aloud.’
‘Whimsy. Whim, crotchet, fad. What’s a crotchet, sir?’
‘A whimsy. Is there any more? Continue, then.’
‘Whimsical: capricious, fantastic.’
‘Old Grimmy’s fantastic,’ cried a voice gleefully from the back of the class. This was repeated in various quarters, and there was laughter.
Grimshaw crimsoned painfully.
‘Sit down now, Grimshaw. Give the dictionary back to Sutcliffe. No more whimsies today, Grimshaw?’
‘No, sir,’ said Grimshaw, very quiet.
Jonathan, having forgotten his ambitions, his learning, his failure, his desire to please, in a word himself, in his grief for Morcar, gave a good brisk lesson. It was listened to with silence, with respect, and presently even with interest. There was not a word out of Grimshaw.
At the end of the period Jonathan could not help but feel a certain elation.
‘I got on top of them that time,’ he thought.
Immediately he felt ashamed. He had always promised himself never to hold a pupil up to derision, and he had performed precisely this despicable trick with poor silly young Grimshaw.
‘The world’s slow stain,’ he rebuked himself.
Nevertheless he thought he began dimly to see, or perhaps only to feel, what had been wrong previously with his teaching.