Whitsontide

Whitsontide marks one of the regular pauses in young Le Fever’s schooling, when the Corporal is sent to bring him home. Its small place in the calendar helps measure the years in which Toby supports and raises the boy, before Le Fever’s decision to leave school and seek military service changes the course of that care.

A recurring school holiday

After Toby teaches Le Fever to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sends him to public school. The boy remains there apart from the holidays at Whitsontide and Christmas, when the Corporal is punctually dispatched for him. Whitsontide is thus mentioned as part of an established routine rather than as the setting for a separate episode: its significance lies in the regular return of the boy from school to Toby’s household.

Time, education, and departure

The school routine continues until the spring of the year Le Fever turns seventeen. News that the emperor is sending an army into Hungary against the Turks kindles his desire for military life; he leaves his Greek and Latin studies without permission and kneels before Toby to ask for his father’s sword and leave to serve under Eugene. The holiday pattern gives shape to the education he abandons, while the sudden departure marks the end of the interval in which Toby’s care could bring him home at set seasons.

The holiday within Toby’s care

The Corporal’s punctual journeys for Le Fever make the school calendar part of Toby’s sustained guardianship. Toby has already arranged the boy’s schooling, and, when Le Fever chooses to enlist, prepares him for the journey to Leghorn and returns his father’s sword to him. Whitsontide itself is not described as a religious observance or as a scene of action; it is a precise marker of the domestic rhythm that precedes this separation.