Chapter 2

SPRINGTIME

Easter of the year when I entered the University fell late in
April, so that the examinations were fixed for St. Thomas's Week,
[Easter week.] and I had to spend Good Friday in fasting and
finally getting myself ready for the ordeal.

Following upon wet snow (the kind of stuff which Karl Ivanitch
used to describe as "a child following, its father"), the weather
had for three days been bright and mild and still. Not a clot of
snow was now to be seen in the streets, and the dirty slush had
given place to wet, shining pavements and coursing rivulets. The
last icicles on the roofs were fast melting in the sunshine, buds
were swelling on the trees in the little garden, the path leading
across the courtyard to the stables was soft instead of being a
frozen ridge of mud, and mossy grass was showing green between
the stones around the entrance-steps. It was just that particular
time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence
upon the human soul--when clear sunlight illuminates everything,
yet sheds no warmth, when rivulets run trickling under one's
feet, when the air is charged with an odorous freshness, and when
the bright blue sky is streaked with long, transparent clouds.

For some reason or another the influence of this early stage in
the birth of spring always seems to me more perceptible and more
impressive in a great town than in the country. One sees less,
but one feels more. I was standing near the window--through the
double frames of which the morning sun was throwing its mote-
flecked beams upon the floor of what seemed to me my intolerably
wearisome schoolroom--and working out a long algebraical equation
on the blackboard. In one hand I was holding a ragged, long-
suffering "Algebra" and in the other a small piece of chalk
which had already besmeared my hands, my face, and the elbows of
my jacket. Nicola, clad in an apron, and with his sleeves rolled
up, was picking out the putty from the window-frames with a pair
of nippers, and unfastening the screws. The window looked out
upon the little garden. At length his occupation and the noise
which he was making over it arrested my attention. At the moment
I was in a very cross, dissatisfied frame of mind, for nothing
seemed to be going right with me. I had made a mistake at the
very beginning of my algebra, and so should have to work it out
again; twice I had let the chalk drop. I was conscious that my
hands and face were whitened all over; the sponge had rolled away
into a corner; and the noise of Nicola's operations was fast
getting on my nerves. I had a feeling as though I wanted to fly
into a temper and grumble at some one, so I threw down chalk and
"Algebra" alike, and