But no. None of this happened. None of it. Bellgrove was all this. There was no gap in the long tally of his spineless faults. He was constructed as though expressly for the starlings of Gormenghast. There he was, but no one approached him. His hair was white as snow, but it might as well have been grey or brown or have moulted in the dank of faithless seasons. There seemed to be a blind spot in the mass-vision of the swarming youths.
They looked this great gift-lion in the mouth. It snarled in its weakness, for its teeth were aching. It trod the immemorial corridors. It dozed fitfully at its desk through the terms of sun and ice. And now, it was a Headmaster and lonelier than ever. But there was pride. The claws were blunt, but they were ready. But not so, now. For at the moment his vulnerable heart was swollen with love.
'My young friend,' he said, his eyes still on the ceiling of the fort and his chin tucked into the pit of his neck. 'I propose to talk to you as man to man. Now the thing 'is'...' (he lingered over the last word)... 'the thing... is... what shall we talk 'about'?' He lowered his rather dull eyes and saw that Titus was frowning at him thoughtfully.
'We 'could', you see, young man, talk of so many things, could we not, as man to man. Or even as boy to boy. H'm. Quite so. But what? That is the paramount consideration - isn't it?'
'Yes, sir. I suppose so,' said Titus.
'Now, if you are twelve, my boy, and I am eighty-six, let us say, for I think that ought to cover me, then let us take twelve from eighty-six and halve the result. No, no. I won't make 'you' do it because that would be most unfair. Ah yes, indeed it would - for what's the good of being a prisoner and then being made to do lessons too? Eh? Eh? Might as well not be punished, eh?... Let me see, where were we, where were we? Yes, yes, yes, twelve from eighty-six, that's about seventy-four, isn't it? Well, what is half seventy-four? I wonder... h'm, yes, twice three are six, carry one, and twice seven are fourteen... thirty-seven, I do believe. Thirty-seven. And what is thirty-seven? Why, it's just exactly the half-way age between us. So if I tried to be thirty-seven years young - and you tried to be thirty-seven years old - but that would be ' ' difficult, wouldn't it? Because you've never been thirty-seven, have you? But then, although your old headmaster has 'been' thirty-seven, long ago, he can't remember a thing about it except that it was somewhere about that time that he bought a bag of glass marbles. O yes he did. And why? Because he became tired of teaching grammar and spelling and arithmetic. O yes, and because he saw how much happier the people were who played marbles than the people were who didn't. That's a bad sentence, my boy. So I used to play in the dark after the other young professors were asleep. We had one of the old Gormenghast tapestry-carpets in the room and I used to light a candle and place my marbles on the corners of patterns in the carpet, and in the middle of crimson and yellow flowers. I can remember the carpet perfectly as though it was here in this old fort, and there, every night by the glow of a candle, I would practise until I could flick a marble along the floor so that when it struck another it spun round and round but stayed exactly where it was, my boy, while the one it had struck shot off like a rocket to land at the other end of the room in the centre of a crimson carpet flower (if I was successful), or if not, near enough to couch itself at the next flick. And the sounds of the glass marbles in the still of the night when they struck was like the sound of tiny crystal vases breaking on stone floors - but I am getting too poetic, my boy, aren't I? And boys don't like poetry, do they?'
Bellgrove took off his mortar-board, placed it on the floor and wiped his brow with the biggest and grubbiest handkerchief Titus had ever seen come out of a grown-up's pocket.
'Ah me, my young friend, the sound of those marbles... the sound of those silly marbles. Forlorn, it is, my, boy, to remember the little glass notes - forlorn as the tapping of a woodpecker in a summer forest.'
'I've got some marbles, sir, said Titus, sliding off the table and diving his hand into his trouser pocket.
Bellgrove dropped his hands to his sides where they hung like dead weights.
It was as though his joy at finding his little plan maturing so successfully was so all-absorbing that he had no faculties left over to control his limbs. His wide, uneven mouth was ajar with delight. He rose to his feet and turning his back on Titus made his way to the far end of the small fort. He was sure that his joy, was written all over his face and that it was not for headmasters to show that sort of thing to any but their wives, and he had no wife... no wife at all.
Titus watched him. What a funny way he put his big flat feet on the ground, as though he were smacking it slowly with the soles of his boots - not so much to hurt it, as to wake it up.
'My boy,' said Bellgrove at last when he had returned to Titus, having fought the smile away from his face - 'this is an extraordinary coincidence, you know. Not only do you like marbles, but I...' and he drew from the decaying darkness of a pocket like a raw-lipped gulch, exactly six globes.
'O sir!' said Titus. 'I never thought 'you'd' have marbles.'
'My boy,' said Bellgrove. 'Let it be a lesson to you. Now where shall we play.
Eh? Eh? Good grief, my young friend, what a long way down it is to the floor and how my poor old muscles creak...'
Bellgrove was lowering himself by degrees to the dusty ground.
'We must examine the terrain for irregularities, h'm, yes, that's what we must do, isn't it, my boy? Examine the terrain, like generals, eh? And find our battle ground: 'Yes, sir,' said Titus, dropping to the knees and crawling alongside the old, pale lion. 'But it looks flat enough to me, sir, I'll make one of the squares here, and...'
But at this moment the door of the fort opened again and Doctor Prunesquallor stepped out of the sunlight and into the grey gloom of the small fort.
'Well! well! well! well! well!' he trilled, peering into the shadows. 'Well, well, well! What a dreadful place to gaol an earl in, by all that's merciless. And where is he, this fabulous little wrong-doer - this breaker of bounds, this flouter of unwritten laws, this thoroughly naughty boy? God bless my shocked spirit if I don't see two of them - and one much bigger than the other - or is there someone with you, Titus, and if so, who can it be, and what in the name of dust and ashes can you find so absorbing on the earth's bosom, that you must crawl about on it, belly to stubble, like beasts that stalk their prey?'