I grinned at him. “Oh no, I wouldn’t do that,” and that was the most false thing, the biggest lie of
all.

Chapter 6

Peace had deserted Devon. Although not in the look of the campus and village; they retained
much of their dreaming summer calm. Fall had barely touched the full splendor of the trees, and
during the height of the day the sun briefly regained its summertime power. In the air there was
only an edge of coolness to imply the coming winter.

But all had been caught up, like the first fallen leaves, by a new and energetic wind. The Summer
Session—a few dozen boys being force-fed education, a stopgap while most of the masters were
away and most of the traditions stored against sultriness—the Summer Session was over. It had
been the school’s first,’ but this was its one hundred and sixty-third Winter Session, and the
forces reassembled for it scattered the easygoing summer spirit like so many fallen leaves.

The masters were in their places for the first Chapel, seated in stalls in front of and at right angles
to us, suggesting by their worn expressions and careless postures that they had never been away
at all.

In an apse of the church sat their wives and children, the objects during the tedious winter
months of our ceaseless, ritual speculation (Why did he ever marry her? What in the world ever
made her marry him? How could the two of them ever have produced those little monsters?). The
masters favored seersucker on this mild first day the wives broke out their hats. Five of the
younger teachers were missing gone into the war. Mr Pike had come in his Naval ensigns
uniform; some reflex must have survived Midshipman’s School and brought him back to Devon
for the day His face was as mild and hopeless as ever; mooning above the snappy, rigid blouse, it
gave him the air of an impostor.

Continuity was the keynote. The same hymns were played the same sermon given, the same
announcements made. There was one surprise; maids had disappeared “for the Duration,” a new
phase then. But continuity was stressed, not beginning again but continuing the education of
young men according to the unbroken traditions of Devon.

I knew, perhaps I alone knew, that this was false. Devon had slipper’ through their fingers during
the warm overlooked months. The tradition’s had been broken, the standards let down, all rules
forgotten. In those bright days of truancy we had never thought of What We Owed Devon, as the
sermon this opening day exhorted us to do. We had thought of ourselves, of what Devon owed
us, and we had taken all of that and much more Today’s hymn was Dear Lord and Father of
Mankind Forgive Our Foolish Ways; we had never heard that during the summer either. Ours
had been a wayward gypsy music, leading us down all kinds of foolish gypsy ways, unforgiven. I
was glad of it, I had almost caught the rhythm of it, the dancing, clicking jangle of it during the
summer.

Still it had come to an end, in the last long rays of daylight at the tree, when Phineas fell. It was
forced on me as I sat chilled through the Chapel service, that this probably vindicated the rules of