Free The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin Page A

proud to announce that next month Francis starts off for Holywell!’ Making the name the triumphant keystone of his peroration, Ned sat down, perspiring, amidst loud applause.
IV
    Though the elm shadows were long upon the cropped lawns of Holywell, the northern June evening was still light as noon. The darkness would come late, so closely to dawn the aurora borealis would but briefly glitter across the high pale heavens. As Francis sat at the open window of the high little study which he shared, since his election to the ‘Philosophers’, with Laurence Hudson and Anselm Mealey, he felt his attention wander from the notebook, drawn, almost sadly, with a sense of the transience of beauty, to the lovely scene before him.
    From the steep angle of his vision he could see the school, a noble grey granite baronial mansion, built for Sir Archibald Frazer in 1609, and endowed, this century, as a Catholic College. The chapel, styled in the same severity, lay at right angles, linked by a cloister, to the library, enclosing a quadrangle of historic turf. Beyond were the fives and handball courts, the playing fields, the end of a game still in progress, wide reaches of pasture threaded by the Stinchar River with stumpy black Polled Angus cattle grazing stolidly, woods of beech and oak and rowan clustering the lodge, and in the ultimate distance the backdrop, blue, faintly serrated, of the Aberdeenshire Grampians.
    Without knowing, Francis sighed. It seemed only yesterday that he had landed at Doune, the draughty northern junction, a new boy, scared out of his wits, facing the unknown and that first frightful interview with the Headmaster, Father Hamish MacNabb. He remembered how ‘ Rusty Mac’, great little Highland gentleman, blood cousin to MacNabb of the Isles, had crouched at his desk beneath his tartan cape, peering from bushy red eyebrows, dread-fully formidable.
    ‘Well, boy, what can you do?’
    ‘Please, sir … nothing.’
    ‘Nothing! Can’t you dance the Highland Fling?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘What! With a grand name like Chisholm?’
    ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
    ‘Humph! There’s not much profit in you, is there boy?’
    ‘No, sir, except sir …’ Trembling: ‘… Maybe I can fish.’
    ‘Maybe, eh?’ A slow dry smile. ‘Then maybe we’ll be friends.’ The smile deepened. ‘The clans of Chisholm and MacNabb fished together, ay, and fought together, before you or I were thought of. Run now, before I cane ye.’
    And now, in one more term, he would be leaving Holywell. Again his gaze slanted down to the little groups promenading to and fro on the gravelled terraces beside the fountain. A seminary custom! Well, what of it? Most of them would go from here to the Seminary of San Morales in Spain. He discerned his room-mates walking together: Anselm, as usual, extrovert in his affections, one arm tenderly linking his companion’s, the other gesticulating, but nicely, as befitted the outright winner of the Frazer Good Fellowship Prize! Behind the two, surrounded by his coterie, paced Father Tarrant – tall, dark, thin … intense yet sardonic … classically remote.
    At the sight of the youngish priest Francis’ expression tightened oddly. He viewed the open notebook before him on the window ledge with distaste, picked up his pen and began, after a moment, his imposition. His frown of resolution did not mar the clean brown moulding of his cheek or the sombre clearness of his hazel eyes. Now, at eighteen, his body had a wiry grace. The chaste light heightened absurdly his physical attractiveness, that air, unspoiled and touching, which – inescapable – so often humiliated him.
    ‘June-14th, 1887. Today there occurred an incident of such phenomenal and thrilling impropriety I must revenge myself on this beastly diary, and Father Tarrant, by recording it. I oughtn’t really to waste this hour before vespers – afterwards I shall be dutifully cornered by Anselm to play handball – I should jot down Ascension