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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of St. Austin's, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tales of St. Austin's
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Posting Date: August 26, 2012 [EBook #6980]
+Release Date: November, 2004
+First Posted: February 19, 2003
+Last Updated: August 3, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF ST. AUSTIN'S ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF ST AUSTIN'S
+
+
+
+
+by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Most of these stories originally appeared in _The Captain_. I am
+indebted to the Editor of that magazine for allowing me to republish.
+The rest are from the _Public School Magazine_. The story entitled
+'A Shocking Affair' appears in print for the first time. 'This was one
+of our failures.'
+
+_P. G. Wodehouse_
+
+
+
+
+[Dedication]
+AD MATREM
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+1 How Pillingshot Scored
+
+2 The Odd Trick
+
+3 L'Affaire Uncle John (A Story in Letters)
+
+4 Harrison's Slight Error
+
+5 Bradshaw's Little Story
+
+6 A Shocking Affair
+
+7 The Babe and the Dragon
+
+8 The Manoeuvres of Charteris
+
+9 How Payne Bucked Up
+
+10 Author!
+
+11 'The Tabby Terror'
+
+12 The Prize Poem
+
+13 Work
+
+14 Notes
+
+15 Now, Talking About Cricket--
+
+16 The Tom Brown Question
+
+
+
+
+[1]
+
+HOW PILLINGSHOT SCORED
+
+
+Pillingshot was annoyed. He was disgusted, mortified; no other word for
+it. He had no objection, of course, to Mr Mellish saying that his work
+during the term, and especially his Livy, had been disgraceful. A
+master has the right to say that sort of thing if he likes. It is one
+of the perquisites of the position. But when he went on to observe,
+without a touch of shame, that there would be an examination in the
+Livy as far as they had gone in it on the following Saturday,
+Pillingshot felt that he exceeded. It was not playing the game. There
+were the examinations at the end of term. Those were fair enough. You
+knew exactly when they were coming, and could make your arrangements
+accordingly. But to spring an examination on you in the middle of the
+term out of a blue sky, as it were, was underhand and unsportsmanlike,
+and would not do at all. Pillingshot wished that he could put his foot
+down. He would have liked to have stalked up to Mr Mellish's desk,
+fixed him with a blazing eye, and remarked, 'Sir, withdraw that remark.
+Cancel that statement instantly, or--!' or words to that effect.
+
+What he did say was: 'Oo, si-i-r!!'
+
+'Yes,' said Mr Mellish, not troubling to conceal his triumph
+at Pillingshot's reception of the news, 'there will be a Livy
+examination next Saturday. And--' (he almost intoned this last
+observation)--'anybody who does not get fifty per cent, Pillingshot,
+fifty per cent, will be severely punished. Very severely punished,
+Pillingshot.'
+
+After which the lesson had proceeded on its course.
+
+'Yes, it is rather low, isn't it?' said Pillingshot's friend, Parker,
+as Pillingshot came to the end of a stirring excursus on the rights of
+the citizen, with special reference to mid-term Livy examinations.
+'That's the worst of Mellish. He always has you somehow.'
+
+'But what am I to _do_?' raved Pillingshot.
+
+'I should advise you to swot it up before Saturday,' said Parker.
+
+'Oh, don't be an ass,' said Pillingshot, irritably.
+
+What was the good of friends if they could only make idiotic
+suggestions like that?
+
+He retired, brooding, to his house.
+
+The day was Wednesday. There were only two more days, therefore, in
+which to prepare a quarter of a book of Livy. It couldn't be done. The
+thing was not possible.
+
+In the house he met Smythe.
+
+'What are you going to do about it?' he inquired. Smythe was top of the
+form, and if he didn't know how to grapple with a crisis of this sort,
+who _could_ know?
+
+'If you'll kindly explain,' said Smythe, 'what the dickens you are
+talking about, I might be able to tell you.'
+
+Pillingshot explained, with unwonted politeness, that 'it' meant the
+Livy examination.
+
+'Oh,' said Smythe, airily, 'that! I'm just going to skim through it in
+case I've forgotten any of it. Then I shall read up the notes
+carefully. And then, if I have time, I shall have a look at the history
+of the period. I should advise you to do that, too.'
+
+'Oh, don't be a goat,' said Pillingshot.
+
+And he retired, brooding, as before.
+
+That afternoon he spent industriously, copying out the fourth book of
+_The Aeneid_. At the beginning of the week he had had a slight
+disagreement with M. Gerard, the French master.
+
+Pillingshot's views on behaviour and deportment during French lessons
+did not coincide with those of M. Gerard. Pillingshot's idea of a
+French lesson was something between a pantomime rally and a scrum at
+football. To him there was something wonderfully entertaining in the
+process of 'barging' the end man off the edge of the form into space,
+and upsetting his books over him. M. Gerard, however, had a very
+undeveloped sense of humour. He warned the humorist twice, and on the
+thing happening a third time, suggested that he should go into extra
+lesson on the ensuing Wednesday.
+
+So Pillingshot went, and copied out Virgil.
+
+He emerged from the room of detention at a quarter past four. As he
+came out into the grounds he espied in the middle distance somebody
+being carried on a stretcher in the direction of the School House. At
+the same moment Parker loomed in sight, walking swiftly towards the
+School shop, his mobile features shining with the rapt expression of
+one who sees much ginger-beer in the near future.
+
+'Hullo, Parker,' said Pillingshot, 'who's the corpse?'
+
+'What, haven't you heard?' said Parker. 'Oh, no, of course, you were in
+extra. It's young Brown. He's stunned or something.'
+
+'How did it happen?'
+
+'That rotter, Babington, in Dacre's. Simply slamming about, you know,
+getting his eye in before going in, and Brown walked slap into one of
+his drives. Got him on the side of the head.'
+
+'Much hurt?'
+
+'Oh, no, I don't think so. Keep him out of school for about a week.'
+
+'Lucky beast. Wish somebody would come and hit me on the head. Come
+and hit me on the head, Parker.'
+
+'Come and have an ice,' said Parker.
+
+'Right-ho,' said Pillingshot. It was one of his peculiarities, that
+whatever the hour or the state of the weather, he was always equal to
+consuming an ice. This was probably due to genius. He had an infinite
+capacity for taking pains. Scarcely was he outside the promised ice
+when another misfortune came upon him. Scott, of the First Eleven,
+entered the shop. Pillingshot liked Scott, but he was not blind to
+certain flaws in the latter's character. For one thing, he was too
+energetic. For another, he could not keep his energy to himself. He was
+always making Pillingshot do things. And Pillingshot's notion of the
+ideal life was complete _dolce far niente_.
+
+'Ginger-beer, please,' said Scott, with parched lips. He had been
+bowling at the nets, and the day was hot. 'Hullo! Pillingshot, you
+young slacker, why aren't you changed? Been bunking half-holiday games?
+You'd better reform, young man.'
+
+'I've been in extra,' said Pillingshot, with dignity.
+
+'How many times does that make this term? You're going for the record,
+aren't you? Jolly sporting of you. Bit slow in there, wasn't it?
+'Nother ginger-beer, please.'
+
+'Just a bit,' said Pillingshot.
+
+'I thought so. And now you're dying for some excitement. Of course you
+are. Well, cut over to the House and change, and then come back and
+field at the nets. The man Yorke is going to bowl me some of his
+celebrated slow tosh, and I'm going to show him exactly how Jessop does
+it when he's in form.'
+
+Scott was the biggest hitter in the School. Mr Yorke was one of the
+masters. He bowled slow leg-breaks, mostly half-volleys and long hops.
+Pillingshot had a sort of instinctive idea that fielding out in the
+deep with Mr Yorke bowling and Scott batting would not contribute
+largely to the gaiety of his afternoon. Fielding deep at the nets meant
+that you stood in the middle of the football field, where there was no
+telling what a ball would do if it came at you along the ground. If you
+were lucky you escaped without injury. Generally, however, the ball
+bumped and deprived you of wind or teeth, according to the height to
+which it rose. He began politely, but firmly, to excuse himself.
+
+'Don't talk rot,' said Scott, complainingly, 'you must have some
+exercise or you'll go getting fat. Think what a blow it would be to
+your family, Pillingshot, if you lost your figure. Buck up. If you're
+back here in a quarter of an hour you shall have another ice. A large
+ice, Pillingshot, price sixpence. Think of it.'
+
+The word ice, as has been remarked before, touched chords in
+Pillingshot's nature to which he never turned a deaf ear. Within the
+prescribed quarter of an hour he was back again, changed.
+
+'Here's the ice,' said Scott, 'I've been keeping it warm for you.
+Shovel it down. I want to be starting for the nets. Quicker, man,
+quicker! Don't roll it round your tongue as if it was port. Go for it.
+Finished? That's right. Come on.'
+
+Pillingshot had not finished, but Scott so evidently believed that he
+had, that it would have been unkind to have mentioned the fact. He
+followed the smiter to the nets.
+
+If Pillingshot had passed the earlier part of the afternoon in a
+sedentary fashion, he made up for it now. Scott was in rare form, and
+Pillingshot noticed with no small interest that, while he invariably
+hit Mr Yorke's deliveries a quarter of a mile or so, he never hit two
+balls in succession in the same direction. As soon as the panting
+fieldsman had sprinted to one side of the football ground and returned
+the ball, there was a beautiful, musical _plonk_, and the ball
+soared to the very opposite quarter of the field. It was a fine
+exhibition of hitting, but Pillingshot felt that he would have enjoyed
+it more if he could have watched it from a deck-chair.
+
+'You're coming on as a deep field, young Pillingshot,' said Scott, as
+he took off his pads. 'You've got a knack of stopping them with your
+stomach, which the best first-class fields never have. You ought to
+give lessons at it. Now we'll go and have some tea.'
+
+If Pillingshot had had a more intimate acquaintance with the classics,
+he would have observed at this point, '_Timeo Danaos_', and made a
+last dash for liberty in the direction of the shop. But he was deceived
+by the specious nature of Scott's remark. Visions rose before his eyes
+of sitting back in one of Scott's armchairs, watching a fag toasting
+muffins, which he would eventually dispatch with languid enjoyment. So
+he followed Scott to his study. The classical parallel to his situation
+is the well-known case of the oysters. They, too, were eager for the
+treat.
+
+They had reached the study, and Pillingshot was about to fling himself,
+with a sigh of relief, into the most comfortable chair, when Scott
+unmasked his batteries.
+
+'Oh, by the way,' he said, with a coolness which to Pillingshot
+appeared simply brazen, 'I'm afraid my fag won't be here today. The
+young crock's gone and got mumps, or the plague, or something. So would
+you mind just lighting that stove? It'll be rather warm, but that won't
+matter. There are some muffins in the cupboard. You might weigh in with
+them. You'll find the toasting-fork on the wall somewhere. It's hanging
+up. Got it? Good man. Fire away.'
+
+And Scott collected five cushions, two chairs, and a tin of mixed
+biscuits, and made himself comfortable. Pillingshot, with feelings too
+deep for words (in the then limited state of his vocabulary), did as he
+was requested. There was something remarkable about the way Scott could
+always get people to do things for him. He seemed to take everything
+for granted. If he had had occasion to hire an assassin to make away
+with the German Emperor, he would have said, 'Oh, I say, you might run
+over to Germany and kill the Kaiser, will you, there's a good chap?
+Don't be long.' And he would have taken a seat and waited, without the
+least doubt in his mind that the thing would be carried through as
+desired.
+
+Pillingshot had just finished toasting the muffins, when the door
+opened, and Venables, of Merevale's, came in.
+
+'I thought I heard you say something about tea this afternoon, Scott,'
+said Venables. 'I just looked in on the chance. Good Heavens, man!
+Fancy muffins at this time of year! Do you happen to know what the
+thermometer is in the shade?'
+
+'Take a seat,' said Scott. 'I attribute my entire success in life
+to the fact that I never find it too hot to eat muffins. Do you
+know Pillingshot? One of the hottest fieldsmen in the School.
+At least, he was just now. He's probably cooled off since then.
+Venables--Pillingshot, and _vice versa_. Buck up with the tea,
+Pillingshot. What, ready? Good man. Now we might almost begin.'
+
+'Beastly thing that accident of young Brown's, wasn't it?' said Scott.
+'Chaps oughtn't to go slamming about like that with the field full of
+fellows. I suppose he won't be right by next Saturday?'
+
+'Not a chance. Why? Oh, yes, I forgot. He was to have scored for the
+team at Windybury, wasn't he?'
+
+'Who are you going to get now?'
+
+Venables was captain of the St Austin's team. The match next Saturday
+was at Windybury, on the latter's ground.
+
+'I haven't settled,' said Venables. 'But it's easy to get somebody.
+Scoring isn't one of those things which only one chap in a hundred
+understands.'
+
+Then Pillingshot had an idea--a great, luminous idea.
+
+'May I score?' he asked, and waited trembling with apprehension lest
+the request be refused.
+
+'All right,' said Venables, 'I don't see any reason why you shouldn't.
+We have to catch the 8.14 at the station. Don't you go missing it or
+anything.'
+
+'Rather _not_,' said Pillingshot. 'Not much.'
+
+          *          *          *          *         *
+
+On Saturday morning, at exactly 9.15, Mr Mellish distributed the Livy
+papers. When he arrived at Pillingshot's seat and found it empty, an
+expression passed over his face like unto that of the baffled villain
+in transpontine melodrama.
+
+'Where is Pillingshot?' he demanded tragically. 'Where is he?'
+
+'He's gone with the team to Windybury, sir,' said Parker, struggling to
+conceal a large size in grins. 'He's going to score.'
+
+'No,' said Mr Mellish sadly to himself, 'he _has_ scored.'
+
+
+
+
+[2]
+
+THE ODD TRICK
+
+
+The attitude of Philip St H. Harrison, of Merevale's House, towards his
+fellow-man was outwardly one of genial and even sympathetic toleration.
+Did his form-master intimate that his conduct was not _his_ idea
+of what Young England's conduct should be, P. St H. Harrison agreed
+cheerfully with every word he said, warmly approved his intention of
+laying the matter before the Headmaster, and accepted his punishment
+with the air of a waiter booking an order for a chump chop and fried
+potatoes. But the next day there would be a squeaking desk in the
+form-room, just to show the master that he had not been forgotten. Or,
+again, did the captain of his side at football speak rudely to him on
+the subject of kicking the ball through in the scrum, Harrison would
+smile gently, and at the earliest opportunity tread heavily on the
+captain's toe. In short, he was a youth who made a practice of taking
+very good care of himself. Yet he had his failures. The affair of
+Graham's mackintosh was one of them, and it affords an excellent
+example of the truth of the proverb that a cobbler should stick to his
+last. Harrison's _forte_ was diplomacy. When he forsook the arts
+of the diplomatist for those of the brigand, he naturally went wrong.
+And the manner of these things was thus.
+
+Tony Graham was a prefect in Merevale's, and part of his duties was to
+look after the dormitory of which Harrison was one of the ornaments. It
+was a dormitory that required a good deal of keeping in order. Such
+choice spirits as Braithwaite of the Upper Fourth, and Mace, who was
+rapidly driving the master of the Lower Fifth into a premature grave,
+needed a firm hand. Indeed, they generally needed not only a firm hand,
+but a firm hand grasping a serviceable walking-stick. Add to these
+Harrison himself, and others of a similar calibre, and it will be seen
+that Graham's post was no sinecure. It was Harrison's custom to throw
+off his mask at night with his other garments, and appear in his true
+character of an abandoned villain, willing to stick at nothing as long
+as he could do it strictly incog. In this capacity he had come into
+constant contact with Graham. Even in the dark it is occasionally
+possible for a prefect to tell where a noise comes from. And if the
+said prefect has been harassed six days in the week by a noise, and
+locates it suddenly on the seventh, it is wont to be bad for the
+producer and patentee of same.
+
+And so it came about that Harrison, enjoying himself one night, after
+the manner of his kind, was suddenly dropped upon with violence. He had
+constructed an ingenious machine, consisting of a biscuit tin, some
+pebbles, and some string. He put the pebbles in the tin, tied the
+string to it, and placed it under a chest of drawers. Then he took the
+other end of the string to bed with him, and settled down to make a
+night of it. At first all went well. Repeated inquiries from Tony
+failed to produce the author of the disturbance, and when finally the
+questions ceased, and the prefect appeared to have given the matter up
+as a bad job, P. St H. Harrison began to feel that under certain
+circumstances life was worth living. It was while he was in this happy
+frame of mind that the string, with which he had just produced a
+triumphant rattle from beneath the chest of drawers, was seized, and
+the next instant its owner was enjoying the warmest minute of a
+chequered career. Tony, like Brer Rabbit, had laid low until he was
+certain of the direction from which the sound proceeded. He had then
+slipped out of bed, crawled across the floor in a snake-like manner
+which would have done credit to a Red Indian, found the tin, and traced
+the string to its owner. Harrison emerged from the encounter feeling
+sore and unfit for any further recreation. This deed of the night left
+its impression on Harrison. The account had to be squared somehow, and
+in a few days his chance came. Merevale's were playing a 'friendly'
+with the School House, and in default of anybody better, Harrison had
+been pressed into service as umpire. This in itself had annoyed him.
+Cricket was not in his line--he was not one of your flannelled
+fools--and of all things in connection with the game he loathed
+umpiring most.
+
+When, however, Tony came on to bowl at his end, _vice_ Charteris,
+who had been hit for three fours in an over by Scott, the School
+slogger, he recognized that even umpiring had its advantages, and
+resolved to make the most of the situation.
+
+Scott had the bowling, and he lashed out at Tony's first ball in his
+usual reckless style. There was an audible click, and what the sporting
+papers call confident appeals came simultaneously from Welch,
+Merevale's captain, who was keeping wicket, and Tony himself. Even
+Scott seemed to know that his time had come. He moved a step or two
+away from the wicket, but stopped before going farther to look at the
+umpire, on the off-chance of a miracle happening to turn his decision
+in the batsman's favour.
+
+The miracle happened.
+
+'Not out,' said Harrison.
+
+'Awfully curious,' he added genially to Tony, 'how like a bat those
+bits of grass sound! You have to be jolly smart to know where a noise
+comes from, don't you!'
+
+Tony grunted disgustedly, and walked back again to the beginning of his
+run.
+
+If ever, in the whole history of cricket, a man was out
+leg-before-wicket, Scott was so out to Tony's second ball. It was
+hardly worth appealing for such a certainty. Still, the formality had
+to be gone through.
+
+'How was _that_?' inquired Tony.
+
+'Not out. It's an awful pity, don't you think, that they don't bring in
+that new leg-before rule?'
+
+'Seems to me,' said Tony bitterly, 'the old rule holds pretty good when
+a man's leg's bang in front.'
+
+'Rather. But you see the ball didn't pitch straight, and the rule
+says--'
+
+'Oh, all right,' said Tony.
+
+The next ball Scott hit for four, and the next after that for a couple.
+The fifth was a yorker, and just grazed the leg stump. The sixth was a
+beauty. You could see it was going to beat the batsman from the moment
+it left Tony's hand. Harrison saw it perfectly.
+
+'No ball,' he shouted. And just as he spoke Scott's off-stump
+ricocheted towards the wicket-keeper.
+
+'Heavens, man,' said Tony, fairly roused out of his cricket manners, a
+very unusual thing for him. 'I'll swear my foot never went over the
+crease. Look, there's the mark.'
+
+'Rather not. Only, you see, it seemed to me you chucked that time. Of
+course, I know you didn't mean to, and all that sort of thing, but
+still, the rules--'
+
+Tony would probably have liked to have said something very forcible
+about the rules at this point, but it occurred to him that after all
+Harrison was only within his rights, and that it was bad form to
+dispute the umpire's decision. Harrison walked off towards square-leg
+with a holy joy.
+
+But he was too much of an artist to overdo the thing. Tony's next over
+passed off without interference. Possibly, however, this was because it
+was a very bad one. After the third over he asked Welch if he could get
+somebody else to umpire, as he had work to do. Welch heaved a sigh of
+relief, and agreed readily.
+
+'Conscientious sort of chap that umpire of yours,' said Scott to Tony,
+after the match. Scott had made a hundred and four, and was feeling
+pleased. 'Considering he's in your House, he's awfully fair.'
+
+'You mean that we generally swindle, I suppose?'
+
+'Of course not, you rotter. You know what I mean. But, I say, that
+catch Welch and you appealed for must have been a near thing. I could
+have sworn I hit it.'
+
+'Of course you did. It was clean out. So was the lbw. I say, did you
+think that ball that bowled you was a chuck? That one in my first over,
+you know.'
+
+'Chuck! My dear Tony, you don't mean to say that man pulled you up for
+chucking? I thought your foot must have gone over the crease.'
+
+'I believe the chap's mad,' said Tony.
+
+'Perhaps he's taking it out of you this way for treading on his corns
+somehow. Have you been milling with this gentle youth lately?'
+
+'By Jove,' said Tony, 'you're right. I gave him beans only the other
+night for ragging in the dormitory.'
+
+Scott laughed.
+
+'Well, he seems to have been getting a bit of his own back today. Lucky
+the game was only a friendly. Why will you let your angry passions
+rise, Tony? You've wrecked your analysis by it, though it's improved my
+average considerably. I don't know if that's any solid satisfaction to
+you.'
+
+'It isn't.'
+
+'You don't say so! Well, so long. If I were you, I should keep an eye
+on that conscientious umpire.'
+
+'I will,' said Tony. 'Good-night.'
+
+The process of keeping an eye on Harrison brought no results. When he
+wished to behave himself well, he could. On such occasions Sandford and
+Merton were literally not in it with him, and the hero of a
+Sunday-school story would simply have refused to compete. But Nemesis,
+as the poets tell us, though no sprinter, manages, like the celebrated
+Maisie, to get right there in time. Give her time, and she will arrive.
+She arrived in the case of Harrison. One morning, about a fortnight
+after the House-match incident, Harrison awoke with a new sensation. At
+first he could not tell what exactly this sensation was, and being too
+sleepy to discuss nice points of internal emotion with himself, was
+just turning over with the intention of going to sleep again, when the
+truth flashed upon him. The sensation he felt was loneliness, and the
+reason he felt lonely was because he was the only occupant of the
+dormitory. To right and left and all around were empty beds.
+
+As he mused drowsily on these portents, the distant sound of a bell
+came to his ears and completed the cure. It was the bell for chapel. He
+dragged his watch from under his pillow, and looked at it with
+consternation. Four minutes to seven. And chapel was at seven. Now
+Harrison had been late for chapel before. It was not the thought of
+missing the service that worried him. What really was serious was that
+he had been late so many times before that Merevale had hinted at
+serious steps to be taken if he were late again, or, at any rate, until
+a considerable interval of punctuality had elapsed.
+
+That threat had been uttered only yesterday, and here he was in all
+probability late once more.
+
+There was no time to dress. He sprang out of bed, passed a sponge over
+his face as a concession to the decencies, and looked round for
+something to cover his night-shirt, which, however suitable for
+dormitory use, was, he felt instinctively, scarcely the garment to wear
+in public.
+
+Fate seemed to fight for him. On one of the pegs in the wall hung a
+mackintosh, a large, blessed mackintosh. He was inside it in a moment.
+
+Four minutes later he rushed into his place in chapel.
+
+The short service gave him some time for recovering himself. He left
+the building feeling a new man. His costume, though quaint, would not
+call for comment. Chapel at St Austin's was never a full-dress
+ceremony. Mackintoshes covering night-shirts were the rule rather than
+the exception.
+
+But between his costume and that of the rest there was this subtle
+distinction. They wore their own mackintoshes. He wore somebody else's.
+
+The bulk of the School had split up into sections, each section making
+for its own House, and Merevale's was already in sight, when Harrison
+felt himself grasped from behind. He turned, to see Graham.
+
+'Might I ask,' enquired Tony with great politeness, 'who said you might
+wear my mackintosh?'
+
+Harrison gasped.
+
+'I suppose you didn't know it was mine?'
+
+'No, no, rather not. I didn't know.'
+
+'And if you had known it was mine, you wouldn't have taken it, I
+suppose?'
+
+'Oh no, of course not,' said Harrison. Graham seemed to be taking an
+unexpectedly sensible view of the situation.
+
+'Well,' said Tony, 'now that you know that it is mine, suppose you give
+it up.'
+
+'Give it up!'
+
+'Yes; buck up. It looks like rain, and I mustn't catch cold.'
+
+'But, Graham, I've only got on--'
+
+'Spare us these delicate details. Mack up, please, I want it.'
+
+Finally, Harrison appearing to be difficult in the matter, Tony took
+the garment off for him, and went on his way.
+
+Harrison watched him go with mixed feelings. Righteous indignation
+struggled with the gravest apprehension regarding his own future. If
+Merevale should see him! Horrible thought. He ran. He had just reached
+the House, and was congratulating himself on having escaped, when the
+worst happened. At the private entrance stood Merevale, and with him
+the Headmaster himself. They both eyed him with considerable interest
+as he shot in at the boys' entrance.
+
+'Harrison,' said Merevale after breakfast.
+
+'Yes, sir?'
+
+'The Headmaster wishes to see you--again.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Harrison.
+
+There was a curious lack of enthusiasm in his voice.
+
+
+
+
+[3]
+
+L'AFFAIRE UNCLE JOHN
+(_A Story in Letters_)
+
+
+
+I
+
+From Richard Venables, of St Austin's School, to his brother Archibald
+Venables, of King's College, Cambridge:
+
+Dear Archie--I take up my pen to write to you, not as one hoping for an
+answer, but rather in order that (you notice the Thucydidean
+construction) I may tell you of an event the most important of those
+that have gone before. You may or may not have heard far-off echoes of
+my adventure with Uncle John, who has just come back from the
+diamond-mines--and looks it. It happened thusly:
+
+Last Wednesday evening I was going through the cricket field to meet
+Uncle John, at the station, as per esteemed favour from the governor,
+telling me to. Just as I got on the scene, to my horror, amazement, and
+disgust, I saw a middle-aged bounder, in loud checks, who, from his
+looks, might have been anything from a retired pawnbroker to a
+second-hand butler, sacked from his last place for stealing the
+sherry, standing in the middle of the field, on the very wicket the
+Rugborough match is to be played on next Saturday (tomorrow), and
+digging--_digging_--I'll trouble you. Excavating great chunks of
+our best turf with a walking-stick. I was so unnerved, I nearly
+fainted. It's bad enough being captain of a School team under any
+circs., as far as putting you off your game goes, but when you see the
+wicket you've been rolling by day, and dreaming about by night, being
+mangled by an utter stranger--well! They say a cow is slightly
+irritated when her calf is taken away from her, but I don't suppose the
+most maternal cow that ever lived came anywhere near the frenzy that
+surged up in my bosom at that moment. I flew up to him, foaming at the
+mouth. 'My dear sir,' I shrieked, '_are_ you aware that you're
+spoiling the best wicket that has ever been prepared since cricket
+began?' He looked at me, in a dazed sort of way, and said, 'What?' I
+said: 'How on earth do you think we're going to play Rugborough on a
+ploughed field?' 'I don't follow, mister,' he replied. A man who calls
+you 'mister' is beyond the pale. You are justified in being a little
+rude to him. So I said: 'Then you must be either drunk or mad, and I
+trust it's the latter.' I believe that's from some book, though I don't
+remember which. This did seem to wake him up a bit, but before he could
+frame his opinion in words, up came Biffen, the ground-man, to have a
+last look at his wicket before retiring for the night. When he saw the
+holes--they were about a foot deep, and scattered promiscuously, just
+where two balls out of three pitch--he almost had hysterics. I gently
+explained the situation to him, and left him to settle with my friend
+of the check suit. Biffen was just settling down to a sort of Philippic
+when I went, and I knew that I had left the man in competent hands.
+Then I went to the station. The train I had been told to meet was the
+5.30. By the way, of course, I didn't know in the least what Uncle John
+was like, not having seen him since I was about one-and-a-half, but I
+had been told to look out for a tall, rather good-looking man. Well,
+the 5.30 came in all right, but none of the passengers seemed to answer
+to the description. The ones who were tall were not good looking, and
+the only man who was good looking stood five feet nothing in his boots.
+I did ask him if he was Mr John Dalgliesh; but, his name happening to
+be Robinson, he could not oblige. I sat out a couple more trains, and
+then went back to the field. The man had gone, but Biffen was still
+there. 'Was you expecting anyone today, sir?' he asked, as I came up.
+'Yes. Why?' I said. 'That was 'im,' said Biffen. By skilful
+questioning, I elicited the whole thing. It seems that the fearsome
+bargee, in checks, was the governor's 'tall, good-looking man'; in
+other words, Uncle John himself. He had come by the 4.30, I suppose.
+Anyway, there he was, and I had insulted him badly. Biffen told me that
+he had asked who I was, and that he (Biffen) had given the information,
+while he was thinking of something else to say to him about his
+digging. By the way, I suppose he dug from force of habit. Thought he'd
+find diamonds, perhaps. When Biffen told him this, he said in a nasty
+voice: 'Then, when he comes back will you have the goodness to tell him
+that my name is John Dalgliesh, and that he will hear more of this.'
+And I'm uncommonly afraid I shall. The governor bars Uncle John
+awfully, I know, but he wanted me to be particularly civil to him,
+because he was to get me a place in some beastly firm when I leave. I
+haven't heard from home yet, but I expect to soon. Still, I'd like to
+know how I could stand and watch him ruining the wicket for our spot
+match of the season. As it is, it won't be as good as it would have
+been. The Rugborough slow man will be unplayable if he can find one of
+these spots. Altogether, it's a beastly business. Write soon, though I
+know you won't--Yours ever, _Dick_
+
+
+
+II
+
+Telegram from Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G., to
+his son Richard Venables:
+
+Venables, St Austin's. What all this about Uncle John. Says were
+grossly rude. Write explanation next post--_Venables_.
+
+
+
+III
+
+Letter from Mrs James Anthony (nee Miss Dorothy Venables) to her
+brother Richard Venables:
+
+Dear Dick--What _have_ you been doing to Uncle John? Jim and I are
+stopping for a fortnight with father, and have just come in for the
+whole thing. Uncle John--_isn't_ he a horrible man?--says you were
+grossly insolent to him when he went down to see you. _Do_ write
+and tell me all about it. I have heard no details as yet. Father
+refuses to give them, and gets simply _furious_ when the matter is
+mentioned. Jim said at dinner last night that a conscientious boy would
+probably feel bound to be rude to Uncle John. Father said 'Conscience
+be--'; I forget the rest, but it was awful. Jim says if he gets any
+worse we shall have to sit on his head, and cut the traces. He is
+getting so dreadfully _horsey_. Do write the very minute you get
+this. I want to know all about it.--Your affectionate sister, _Dorothy_
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Part of Letter from Richard Venables, of St Austin's, to his father
+Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G.:
+
+... So you see it was really his fault. The Emperor of Germany has no
+right to come and dig holes in our best wicket. Take a parallel case.
+Suppose some idiot of a fellow (not that Uncle John's that, of course,
+but you know what I mean) came and began rooting up your azaleas.
+Wouldn't you want to say something cutting? I will apologize to Uncle
+John, if you like; but still, I do think he might have gone somewhere
+else if he really wanted to dig. So you see, etc., etc.
+
+
+
+V
+
+Letter from Richard Venables, of St Austin's, to his sister Mrs James
+Anthony:
+
+Dear Dolly--Thanks awfully for your letter, and thank Jim for his
+message. He's a ripper. I'm awfully glad you married him and not that
+rotter, Thompson, who used to hang on so. I hope the most marvellous
+infant on earth is flourishing. And now about Uncle John. Really, I am
+jolly glad I did say all that to him. We played Rugborough yesterday,
+and the wicket was simply vile. They won the toss, and made two hundred
+and ten. Of course, the wicket was all right at one end, and that's
+where they made most of their runs. I was wicket-keeping as usual, and
+I felt awfully ashamed of the beastly pitch when their captain asked me
+if it was the football-field. Of course, he wouldn't have said that if
+he hadn't been a pal of mine, but it was probably what the rest of the
+team thought, only they were too polite to say so. When we came to bat
+it was worse than ever. I went in first with Welch--that's the fellow
+who stopped a week at home a few years ago; I don't know whether you
+remember him. He got out in the first over, caught off a ball that
+pitched where Uncle John had been prospecting, and jumped up. It was
+rotten luck, of course, and worse was to follow, for by half-past five
+we had eight wickets down for just over the hundred, and only young
+Scott, who's simply a slogger, and another fellow to come in. Well,
+Scott came in. I had made about sixty then, and was fairly well
+set--and he started simply mopping up the bowling. He gave a chance
+every over as regular as clockwork, and it was always missed, and then
+he would make up for it with two or three tremendous whangs--a safe
+four every time. It wasn't batting. It was more like golf. Well, this
+went on for some time, and we began to get hopeful again, having got a
+hundred and eighty odd. I just kept up my wicket, while Scott hit. Then
+he got caught, and the last man, a fellow called Moore, came in. I'd
+put him in the team as a bowler, but he could bat a little, too, on
+occasions, and luckily this was one of them. There were only eleven to
+win, and I had the bowling. I was feeling awfully fit, and put their
+slow man clean over the screen twice running, which left us only three
+to get. Then it was over, and Moore played the fast man in grand style,
+though he didn't score. Well, I got the bowling again, and half-way
+through the over I carted a half-volley into the Pav., and that gave us
+the match. Moore hung on for a bit and made about ten, and then got
+bowled. We made 223 altogether, of which I had managed to get
+seventy-eight, not out. It pulls my average up a good bit. Rather
+decent, isn't it? The fellows rotted about a good deal, and chaired me
+into the Pav., but it was Scott who won us the match, I think. He made
+ninety-four. But Uncle John nearly did for us with his beastly
+walking-stick. On a good wicket we might have made any number. I don't
+know how the affair will end. Keep me posted up in the governor's
+symptoms, and write again soon.--Your affectionate brother, _Dick_
+
+PS.--On looking over this letter, I find I have taken it for granted
+that you know all about the Uncle John affair. Probably you do, but, in
+case you don't, it was this way. You see, I was going, etc., etc.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+From Archibald Venables, of King's College, Cambridge, to Richard
+Venables, of St Austin's:
+
+Dear Dick--Just a line to thank you for your letter, and to tell you
+that since I got it I have had a visit from the great Uncle John, too.
+He _is_ an outsider, if you like. I gave him the best lunch I
+could in my rooms, and the man started a long lecture on extravagance.
+He doesn't seem to understand the difference between the 'Varsity and a
+private school. He kept on asking leading questions about pocket-money
+and holidays, and wanted to know if my master allowed me to walk in the
+streets in that waistcoat--a remark which cut me to the quick, 'that
+waistcoat' being quite the most posh thing of the sort in Cambridge. He
+then enquired after my studies; and, finally, when I saw him off at the
+station, said that he had decided not to tip me, because he was afraid
+that I was inclined to be extravagant. I was quite kind to him,
+however, in spite of everything; but I was glad you had spoken to him
+like a father. The recollection of it soothed me, though it seemed to
+worry him. He talked a good deal about it. Glad you came off against
+Rugborough.--Yours ever, _A. Venables_
+
+
+
+VII
+
+From Mr John Dalgliesh to Mr Philip Mortimer, of Penge:
+
+Dear Sir--In reply to your letter of the 18th inst., I shall be happy
+to recommend your son, Reginald, for the vacant post in the firm of
+Messrs Van Nugget, Diomonde, and Mynes, African merchants. I have
+written them to that effect, and you will, doubtless, receive a
+communication from them shortly.--I am, my dear sir, yours faithfully,
+_J. Dalgliesh_
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+From Richard Venables, of St Austin's, to his father Major-General Sir
+Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G.:
+
+Dear Father--Uncle John writes, in answer to my apology, to say that no
+apologies will meet the case; and that he has given his nomination in
+that rotten City firm of his to a fellow called Mortimer. But rather a
+decent thing has happened. There is a chap here I know pretty well, who
+is the son of Lord Marmaduke Twistleton, and it appears that the dook
+himself was down watching the Rugborough match, and liked my batting.
+He came and talked to me after the match, and asked me what I was going
+to do when I left, and I said I wasn't certain, and he said that, if I
+hadn't anything better on, he could give me a place on his estate up in
+Scotland, as a sort of land-agent, as he wanted a chap who could play
+cricket, because he was keen on the game himself, and always had a lot
+going on in the summer up there. So he says that, if I go up to the
+'Varsity for three years, he can guarantee me the place when I come
+down, with a jolly good screw and a ripping open-air life, with lots of
+riding, and so on, which is just what I've always wanted. So, can I?
+It's the sort of opportunity that won't occur again, and you know you
+always said the only reason I couldn't go up to the 'Varsity was, that
+it would be a waste of time. But in this case, you see, it won't,
+because he wants me to go, and guarantees me the place when I come
+down. It'll be awfully fine, if I may. I hope you'll see it.--Your
+affectionate son, _Dick_
+
+PS.--I think he's writing to you. He asked your address. I think Uncle
+John's a rotter. I sent him a rattling fine apology, and this is how he
+treats it. But it'll be all right if you like this land-agent idea. If
+you like, you might wire your answer.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Telegram from Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G., to
+his son Richard Venables, of St Austin's:
+
+Venables, St Austin's. Very well.--_Venables_
+
+
+
+X
+
+Extract from Letter from Richard Venables, of St Austin's, to his
+father Major-General Sir Everard Venables, V.C., K.C.M.G.:
+
+... Thanks, awfully--
+
+Extract from _The Austinian_ of October:
+
+The following O.A.s have gone into residence this year: At Oxford, J.
+Scrymgeour, Corpus Christi; R. Venables, Trinity; K. Crespigny-Brown,
+Balliol.
+
+Extract from the _Daily Mail_'s account of the 'Varsity match of
+the following summer:
+
+... The St Austin's freshman, Venables, fully justified his inclusion by
+scoring a stylish fifty-seven. He hit eight fours, and except for a
+miss-hit in the slips, at 51, which Smith might possibly have secured
+had he started sooner, gave nothing like a chance. Venables, it will be
+remembered, played several good innings for Oxford in the earlier
+matches, notably, his not out contribution of 103 against Sussex--
+
+
+
+
+[4]
+
+HARRISON'S SLIGHT ERROR
+
+
+The one o'clock down express was just on the point of starting. The
+engine-driver, with his hand on the lever, whiled away the moments,
+like the watchman in _The Agamemnon_, by whistling. The guard
+endeavoured to talk to three people at once. Porters flitted to and
+fro, cleaving a path for themselves with trucks of luggage. The Usual
+Old Lady was asking if she was right for some place nobody had ever
+heard of. Everybody was saying good-bye to everybody else, and last,
+but not least, P. St H. Harrison, of St Austin's, was strolling at a
+leisurely pace towards the rear of the train. There was no need for him
+to hurry. For had not his friend, Mace, promised to keep a corner-seat
+for him while he went to the refreshment-room to lay in supplies?
+Undoubtedly he had, and Harrison, as he watched the struggling crowd,
+congratulated himself that he was not as other men. A corner seat in a
+carriage full of his own particular friends, with plenty of provisions,
+and something to read in case he got tired of talking--it would be
+perfect.
+
+So engrossed was he in these reflections, that he did not notice that
+from the opposite end of the platform a youth of about his own age was
+also making for the compartment in question. The first intimation he
+had of his presence was when the latter, arriving first at the door by
+a short head, hurled a bag on to the rack, and sank gracefully into the
+identical corner seat which Harrison had long regarded as his own
+personal property. And to make matters worse, there was no other vacant
+seat in the compartment. Harrison was about to protest, when the guard
+blew his whistle. There was nothing for it but to jump in and argue the
+matter out _en route_. Harrison jumped in, to be greeted instantly
+by a chorus of nine male voices. 'Outside there! No room! Turn him
+out!' said the chorus. Then the chorus broke up into its component
+parts, and began to address him one by one.
+
+'You rotter, Harrison,' said Babington, of Dacre's, 'what do you come
+barging in here for? Can't you see we're five aside already?'
+
+'Hope you've brought a sardine-opener with you, old chap,' said
+Barrett, the peerless pride of Philpott's, ''cos we shall jolly well
+need one when we get to the good old Junct-i-on. Get up into the rack,
+Harrison, you're stopping the ventilation.'
+
+The youth who had commandeered Harrison's seat so neatly took another
+unpardonable liberty at this point. He grinned. Not the timid,
+deprecating smile of one who wishes to ingratiate himself with
+strangers, but a good, six-inch grin right across his face. Harrison
+turned on him savagely.
+
+'Look here,' he said, 'just you get out of that. What do you mean by
+bagging my seat?'
+
+'Are you a director of this line?' enquired the youth politely. Roars
+of applause from the interested audience. Harrison began to feel hot
+and uncomfortable.
+
+'Or only the Emperor of Germany?' pursued his antagonist.
+
+More applause, during which Harrison dropped his bag of provisions,
+which were instantly seized and divided on the share and share alike
+system, among the gratified Austinians.
+
+'Look here, none of your cheek,' was the shockingly feeble retort which
+alone occurred to him. The other said nothing. Harrison returned to the
+attack.
+
+'Look here,' he said, 'are you going to get out, or have I got to make
+you?'
+
+Not a word did his opponent utter. To quote the bard: 'The stripling
+smiled.' To tell the truth, the stripling smiled inanely.
+
+The other occupants of the carriage were far from imitating his
+reserve. These treacherous friends, realizing that, for those who were
+themselves comfortably seated, the spectacle of Harrison standing up
+with aching limbs for a journey of some thirty miles would be both
+grateful and comforting, espoused the cause of the unknown with all the
+vigour of which they were capable.
+
+'Beastly bully, Harrison,' said Barrett. 'Trying to turn the kid out of
+his seat! Why can't you leave the chap alone? Don't you move, kid.'
+
+'Thanks,' said the unknown, 'I wasn't going to.'
+
+'Now you see what comes of slacking,' said Grey. 'If you'd bucked up
+and got here in time you might have bagged this seat I've got. By Jove,
+Harrison, you've no idea how comfortable it is in this corner.'
+
+'Punctuality,' said Babington, 'is the politeness of princes.'
+
+And again the unknown maddened Harrison with a 'best-on-record' grin.
+
+'But, I say, you chaps,' said he, determined as a last resource to
+appeal to their better feelings (if any), 'Mace was keeping this seat
+for me, while I went to get some grub. Weren't you, Mace?' He turned to
+Mace for corroboration. To his surprise, Mace was nowhere to be seen.
+
+His sympathetic school-fellows grasped the full humour of the situation
+as one man, and gave tongue once more in chorus.
+
+'You weed,' they yelled joyfully, 'you've got into the wrong carriage.
+Mace is next door.'
+
+And then, with the sound of unquenchable laughter ringing in his ears,
+Harrison gave the thing up, and relapsed into a disgusted silence. No
+single word did he speak until the journey was done, and the carriage
+emptied itself of its occupants at the Junction. The local train was in
+readiness to take them on to St Austin's, and this time Harrison
+managed to find a seat without much difficulty. But it was a bitter
+moment when Mace, meeting him on the platform, addressed him as a
+rotter, for that he had not come to claim the corner seat which he had
+been reserving for him. They had had, said Mace, a rattling good time
+coming down. What sort of a time had Harrison had in _his_
+carriage? Harrison's reply was not remarkable for its clearness.
+
+The unknown had also entered the local train. It was plain, therefore,
+that he was coming to the School as a new boy. Harrison began to wonder
+if, under these circumstances, something might not be done in the
+matter by way of levelling up things. He pondered. When St Austin's
+station was reached, and the travellers began to stream up the road
+towards the College, he discovered that the newcomer was a member of
+his own House. He was standing close beside him, and heard Babington
+explaining to him the way to Merevale's. Merevale was Harrison's
+House-master.
+
+It was two minutes after he had found out this fact that the Grand Idea
+came to Harrison. He saw his way now to a revenge so artistic, so
+beautifully simple, that it was with some difficulty that he restrained
+himself from bursting into song. For two pins, he felt, he could have
+done a cake-walk.
+
+He checked his emotion. He beat it steadily back, and quenched it. When
+he arrived at Merevale's, he went first to the matron's room. 'Has
+Venables come back yet?' he asked.
+
+Venables was the head of Merevale's House, captain of the School
+cricket, wing three-quarter of the School Fifteen, and a great man
+altogether.
+
+'Yes,' said the matron, 'he came back early this afternoon.'
+
+Harrison knew it. Venables always came back early on the last day of
+the holidays.
+
+'He was upstairs a short while ago,' continued the matron. 'He was
+putting his study tidy.'
+
+Harrison knew it. Venables always put his study tidy on the last day of
+the holidays. He took a keen and perfectly justifiable pride in his
+study, which was the most luxurious in the House.
+
+'Is he there now?' asked Harrison.
+
+'No. He has gone over to see the Headmaster.'
+
+'Thanks,' said Harrison, 'it doesn't matter. It wasn't anything
+important.'
+
+He retired triumphant. Things were going excellently well for his
+scheme.
+
+His next act was to go to the fags' room, where, as he had expected, he
+found his friend of the train. Luck continued to be with him. The
+unknown was alone.
+
+'Hullo!' said Harrison.
+
+'Hullo!' said the fellow-traveller. He had resolved to follow
+Harrison's lead. If Harrison was bringing war, then war let it be. If,
+however, his intentions were friendly, he would be friendly too.
+
+'I didn't know you were coming to Merevale's. It's the best House in
+the School.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Yes, for one thing, everybody except the kids has a study.'
+
+'What? Not really? Why, I thought we had to keep to this room. One of
+the chaps told me so.'
+
+'Trying to green you, probably. You must look out for that sort of
+thing. I'll show you the way to your study, if you like. Come along
+upstairs.'
+
+'Thanks, awfully. It's awfully good of you,' said the gratified
+unknown, and they went upstairs together.
+
+One of the doors which they passed on their way was open, disclosing to
+view a room which, though bare at present, looked as if it might be
+made exceedingly comfortable.
+
+'That's my den,' said Harrison. It was perhaps lucky that Graham, to
+whom the room belonged, in fact, as opposed to fiction, did not hear
+the remark. Graham and Harrison were old and tried foes. 'This is
+yours.' Harrison pushed open another door at the end of the passage.
+
+His companion stared blankly at the Oriental luxury which met his eye.
+'But, I say,' he said, 'are you sure? This seems to be occupied
+already.'
+
+'Oh, no, that's all right,' said Harrison, airily. 'The chap who used
+to be here left last term. He didn't know he was going to leave till it
+was too late to pack up all his things, so he left his study as it was.
+All you've got to do is to cart the things out into the passage and
+leave them there. The Moke'll take 'em away.'
+
+The Moke was the official who combined in a single body the duties of
+butler and bootboy at Merevale's House. 'Oh, right-ho!' said the
+unknown, and Harrison left him.
+
+Harrison's idea was that when Venables returned and found an absolute
+stranger placidly engaged in wrecking his carefully-tidied study, he
+would at once, and without making inquiries, fall upon that absolute
+stranger and blot him off the face of the earth. Afterwards it might
+possibly come out that he, Harrison, had been not altogether
+unconnected with the business, and then, he was fain to admit, there
+might be trouble. But he was a youth who never took overmuch heed for
+the morrow. Sufficient unto the day was his motto. And, besides, it was
+distinctly worth risking. The main point, and the one with which alone
+the House would concern itself, was that he had completely taken in,
+scored off, and overwhelmed the youth who had done as much by him in
+the train, and his reputation as one not to be lightly trifled with
+would be restored to its former brilliance. Anything that might happen
+between himself and Venables subsequently would be regarded as a purely
+private matter between man and man, affecting the main point not at
+all.
+
+About an hour later a small Merevalian informed Harrison that Venables
+wished to see him in his study. He went. Experience had taught him that
+when the Head of the House sent for him, it was as a rule as well to
+humour his whim and go. He was prepared for a good deal, for he had
+come to the conclusion that it was impossible for him to preserve his
+incognito in the matter, but he was certainly not prepared for what he
+saw.
+
+Venables and the stranger were seated in two armchairs, apparently on
+the very best of terms with one another. And this, in spite of the fact
+that these two armchairs were the only furniture left in the study. The
+rest, as he had noted with a grin before he had knocked at the door,
+was picturesquely scattered about the passage.
+
+'Hullo, Harrison,' said Venables, 'I wanted to see you. There seems to
+have been a slight mistake somewhere. Did you tell my brother to shift
+all the furniture out of the study?'
+
+Harrison turned a delicate shade of green.
+
+'Your--er--brother?' he gurgled.
+
+'Yes. I ought to have told you my brother was coming to the Coll. this
+term. I told the Old Man and Merevale and the rest of the authorities.
+Can't make out why I forgot you. Slipped my mind somehow. However, you
+seem to have been doing the square thing by him, showing him round and
+so on. Very good of you.'
+
+Harrison smiled feebly. Venables junior grinned. What seemed to
+Harrison a mystery was how the brothers had managed to arrive at the
+School at different times. The explanation of which was in reality very
+simple. The elder Venables had been spending the last week of the
+holidays with MacArthur, the captain of the St Austin's Fifteen, the
+same being a day boy, suspended within a mile of the School.
+
+'But what I can't make out,' went on Venables, relentlessly, 'is this
+furniture business. To the best of my knowledge I didn't leave suddenly
+at the end of last term. I'll ask if you like, to make sure, but I
+fancy you'll find you've been mistaken. Must have been thinking of
+someone else. Anyhow, we thought you must know best, so we lugged all
+the furniture out into the passage, and now it appears there's been a
+mistake of sorts, and the stuff ought to be inside all the time. So
+would you mind putting it back again? We'd help you, only we're going
+out to the shop to get some tea. You might have it done by the time we
+get back. Thanks, awfully.'
+
+Harrison coughed nervously, and rose to a point of order.
+
+'I was going out to tea, too,' he said.
+
+'I'm sorry, but I think you'll have to scratch the engagement,' said
+Venables.
+
+Harrison made a last effort.
+
+'I'm fagging for Welch this term,' he protested.
+
+It was the rule at St Austin's that every fag had the right to refuse
+to serve two masters. Otherwise there would have been no peace for that
+down-trodden race.
+
+'That,' said Venables, 'ought to be awfully jolly for Welch, don't you
+know, but as a matter of fact term hasn't begun yet. It doesn't start
+till tomorrow. Weigh in.'
+
+Various feelings began to wage war beneath Harrison's Eton waistcoat. A
+profound disinclination to undertake the suggested task battled briskly
+with a feeling that, if he refused the commission, things might--nay,
+would--happen.
+
+'Harrison,' said Venables gently, but with meaning, as he hesitated,
+'do you know what it is to wish you had never been born?'
+
+And Harrison, with a thoughtful expression on his face, picked up a
+photograph from the floor, and hung it neatly in its place over the
+mantelpiece.
+
+
+
+
+[5]
+
+BRADSHAW'S LITTLE STORY
+
+
+The qualities which in later years rendered Frederick Wackerbath
+Bradshaw so conspicuous a figure in connection with the now celebrated
+affair of the European, African, and Asiatic Pork Pie and Ham Sandwich
+Supply Company frauds, were sufficiently in evidence during his school
+career to make his masters prophesy gloomily concerning his future. The
+boy was in every detail the father of the man. There was the same
+genial unscrupulousness, upon which the judge commented so bitterly
+during the trial, the same readiness to seize an opportunity and make
+the most of it, the same brilliance of tactics. Only once during those
+years can I remember an occasion on which Justice scored a point
+against him. I can remember it, because I was in a sense responsible
+for his failure. And he can remember it, I should be inclined to think,
+for other reasons. Our then Headmaster was a man with a straight eye
+and a good deal of muscular energy, and it is probable that the
+talented Frederick, in spite of the passage of years, has a tender
+recollection of these facts.
+
+It was the eve of the Euripides examination in the Upper Fourth.
+Euripides is not difficult compared to some other authors, but he does
+demand a certain amount of preparation. Bradshaw was a youth who did
+less preparation than anybody I have ever seen, heard of, or read of,
+partly because he preferred to peruse a novel under the table during
+prep., but chiefly, I think, because he had reduced cribbing in form to
+such an exact science that he loved it for its own sake, and would no
+sooner have come tamely into school with a prepared lesson than a
+sportsman would shoot a sitting bird. It was not the marks that he
+cared for. He despised them. What he enjoyed was the refined pleasure
+of swindling under a master's very eye. At the trial the judge, who
+had, so ran report, been himself rather badly bitten by the Ham
+Sandwich Company, put the case briefly and neatly in the words, 'You
+appear to revel in villainy for villainy's sake,' and I am almost
+certain that I saw the beginnings of a gratified smile on Frederick's
+expressive face as he heard the remark. The rest of our study--the
+juniors at St Austin's pigged in quartettes--were in a state of
+considerable mental activity on account of this Euripides examination.
+There had been House-matches during the preceding fortnight, and
+House-matches are not a help to study, especially if you are on the
+very fringe of the cock-house team, as I was. By dint of practising
+every minute of spare time, I had got the eleventh place for my
+fielding. And, better still, I had caught two catches in the second
+innings, one of them a regular gallery affair, and both off the
+captain's bowling. It was magnificent, but it was not Euripides, and I
+wished now that it had been. Mellish, our form-master, had an
+unpleasant habit of coming down with both feet, as it were, on members
+of his form who failed in the book-papers.
+
+We were working, therefore, under forced draught, and it was distinctly
+annoying to see the wretched Bradshaw lounging in our only armchair
+with one of Rider Haggard's best, seemingly quite unmoved at the
+prospect of Euripides examinations. For all he appeared to care,
+Euripides might never have written a line in his life.
+
+Kendal voiced the opinion of the meeting.
+
+'Bradshaw, you worm,' he said. 'Aren't you going to do _any_
+work?'
+
+'Think not. What's the good? Can't get up a whole play of Euripides in
+two hours.'
+
+'Mellish'll give you beans.'
+
+'Let him.'
+
+'You'll get a jolly bad report.'
+
+'Shan't get a report at all. I always intercept it before my guardian
+can get it. He never says anything.'
+
+'Mellish'll probably run you in to the Old Man,' said White, the fourth
+occupant of the study.
+
+Bradshaw turned on us with a wearied air.
+
+'Oh, do give us a rest,' he said. 'Here you are just going to do a most
+important exam., and you sit jawing away as if you were paid for it.
+Oh, I say, by the way, who's setting the paper tomorrow?'
+
+'Mellish, of course,' said White.
+
+'No, he isn't,' I said. 'Shows what a lot you know about it. Mellish is
+setting the Livy paper.'
+
+'Then, who's doing this one?' asked Bradshaw.
+
+'Yorke.'
+
+Yorke was the master of the Upper Fifth. He generally set one of the
+upper fourth book-papers.
+
+'Certain?' said Bradshaw.
+
+'Absolutely.'
+
+'Thanks. That's all I wanted to know. By Jove, I advise you chaps to
+read this. It's grand. Shall I read out this bit about a fight?'
+
+'No!' we shouted virtuously, all together, though we were dying to hear
+it, and we turned once more to the loathsome inanities of the second
+chorus. If we had been doing Homer, we should have felt more in touch
+with Bradshaw. There's a good deal of similarity, when you come to
+compare them, between Homer and Haggard. They both deal largely in
+bloodshed, for instance. As events proved, the Euripides paper, like
+many things which seem formidable at a distance, was not nearly so bad
+as I had expected. I did a fair-to-moderate paper, and Kendal and White
+both seemed satisfied with themselves. Bradshaw confessed without
+emotion that he had only attempted the last half of the last question,
+and on being pressed for further information, merely laughed
+mysteriously, and said vaguely that it would be all right.
+
+It now became plain that he had something up his sleeve. We expressed a
+unanimous desire to know what it was.
+
+'You might tell a chap,' I said.
+
+'Out with it, Bradshaw, or we'll lynch you,' added Kendal.
+
+Bradshaw, however, was not to be drawn. Much of his success in the
+paths of crime, both at school and afterwards, was due to his secretive
+habits. He never permitted accomplices.
+
+On the following Wednesday the marks were read out. Out of a possible
+hundred I had obtained sixty--which pleased me very much indeed--White,
+fifty-five, Kendal, sixty-one. The unspeakable Bradshaw's net total was
+four.
+
+Mellish always read out bad marks in a hushed voice, expressive of
+disgust and horror, but four per cent was too much for him. He shouted
+it, and the form yelled applause, until Ponsonby came in from the Upper
+Fifth next door with Mr Yorke's compliments, 'and would we recollect
+that his form were trying to do an examination'.
+
+When order had been restored, Mellish settled his glasses and glared
+through them at Bradshaw, who, it may be remarked, had not turned a
+hair.
+
+'Bradshaw,' he said, 'how do you explain this?'
+
+It was merely a sighting shot, so to speak. Nobody was ever expected to
+answer the question. Bradshaw, however, proved himself the exception to
+the rule.
+
+'I can explain, sir,' he said, 'if I may speak to you privately
+afterwards.'
+
+I have seldom seen anyone so astonished as Mellish was at these words.
+In the whole course of his professional experience, he had never met
+with a parallel case. It was hard on the poor man not to be allowed to
+speak his mind about a matter of four per cent in a book-paper, but
+what could he do? He could not proceed with his denunciation, for if
+Bradshaw's explanation turned out a sufficient excuse, he would have to
+withdraw it all again, and vast stores of golden eloquence would be
+wasted. But, then, if he bottled up what he wished to say altogether,
+it might do him a serious internal injury. At last he hit on a
+compromise. He said, 'Very well, Bradshaw, I will hear what you have to
+say,' and then sprang, like the cat in the poem, 'all claws', upon an
+unfortunate individual who had scored twenty-nine, and who had been
+congratulating himself that Bradshaw's failings would act as a sort of
+lightning-conductor to him. Bradshaw worked off his explanation in
+under five minutes. I tried to stay behind to listen, on the pretext of
+wanting to tidy up my desk, but was ejected by request. Bradshaw
+explained that his statement was private.
+
+After a time they came out together like long-lost brothers, Mellish
+with his hand on Bradshaw's shoulder. It was some small comfort to me
+to remember that Bradshaw had the greatest dislike to this sort of
+thing.
+
+It was evident that Bradshaw, able exponent of the art of fiction that
+he was, must have excelled himself on this occasion. I tried to get the
+story out of him in the study that evening. White and Kendal assisted.
+We tried persuasion first. That having failed, we tried taunts. Then we
+tried kindness. Kendal sat on his legs, and I sat on his head, and
+White twisted his arm. I think that we should have extracted something
+soon, either his arm from its socket or a full confession, but we were
+interrupted. The door flew open, and Prater (the same being our
+House-master, and rather a good sort) appeared.
+
+'Now then, now then,' he said. Prater's manner is always abrupt.
+
+'What's this? I can't have this. I can't have this. Get up at once.
+Where's Bradshaw?'
+
+I rose gracefully to my feet, thereby disclosing the classic features
+of the lost one.
+
+'The Headmaster wants to see you at once, Bradshaw, at the School
+House. You others had better find something to do, or you will be
+getting into trouble.'
+
+He and Bradshaw left together, while we speculated on the cause of the
+summons.
+
+We were not left very long in suspense. In a quarter of an hour
+Bradshaw returned, walking painfully, and bearing what, to the expert's
+eye, are the unmistakable signs of a 'touching up', which, being
+interpreted, is corporal punishment.
+
+'Hullo,' said White, as he appeared, 'what's all this?'
+
+'How many?' enquired the statistically-minded Kendal. 'You'll be
+thankful for this when you're a man, Bradshaw.'
+
+'That's what I always say to myself when I'm touched up,' added Kendal.
+
+I said nothing, but it was to me that the wounded one addressed
+himself.
+
+'You utter ass,' he said, in tones of concentrated venom.
+
+'Look here, Bradshaw--' I began, protestingly.
+
+'It's all through you--you idiot,' he snarled. 'I got twelve.'
+
+'Twelve isn't so dusty,' said White, critically. 'Most I ever got was
+six.'
+
+'But why was it?' asked Kendal. 'That's what we want to know. What have
+you been and gone and done?'
+
+'It's about that Euripides paper,' said Bradshaw.
+
+'Ah!' said Kendal.
+
+'Yes, I don't mind telling you about it now. When Mellish had me up
+after school today, I'd got my yarn all ready. There wasn't a flaw in
+it anywhere as far as I could see. My idea was this. I told him I'd
+been to Yorke's room the day before the exam, to ask him if he had any
+marks for us. That was all right. Yorke was doing the two Unseen
+papers, and it was just the sort of thing a fellow would do to go and
+ask him about the marks.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Then when I got there he was out, and I looked about for the marks,
+and on the table I saw the Euripides paper.'
+
+'By Jove!' said Kendal. We began to understand, and to realize that
+here was a master-mind.
+
+'Well, of course, I read it, not knowing what it was, and then, as the
+only way of not taking an unfair advantage, I did as badly as I could
+in the exam. That was what I told Mellish. Any beak would have
+swallowed it.'
+
+'Well, didn't he?'
+
+'Mellish did all right, but the rotter couldn't keep it to himself.
+Went and told the Old Man. The Old Man sent for me. He was as decent as
+anything at first. That was just his guile. He made me describe exactly
+where I had seen the paper, and so on. That was rather risky, of
+course, but I put it as vaguely as I could. When I had finished, he
+suddenly whipped round, and said, "Bradshaw, why are you telling me all
+these lies?" That's the sort of thing that makes you feel rather a
+wreck. I was too surprised to say anything.'
+
+'I can guess the rest,' said Kendal. 'But how on earth did he know it
+was all lies? Why didn't you stick to your yarn?'
+
+'And, besides,' I put in, 'where do I come in? I don't see what I've
+got to do with it.'
+
+Bradshaw eyed me fiercely. 'Why, the whole thing was your fault,' he
+said. 'You told me Yorke was setting the paper.'
+
+'Well, so he did, didn't he?'
+
+'No, he didn't. The Old Man set it himself,' said Bradshaw, gloomily.
+
+
+
+
+[6]
+
+A SHOCKING AFFAIR
+
+
+The Bradshaw who appears in the following tale is the same youth who
+figures as the hero--or villain, label him as you like--of the
+preceding equally veracious narrative. I mention this because I should
+not care for you to go away with the idea that a waistcoat marked with
+the name of Bradshaw must of necessity cover a scheming heart. It may,
+however, be noticed that a good many members of the Bradshaw family
+possess a keen and rather sinister sense of the humorous, inherited
+doubtless from their great ancestor, the dry wag who wrote that
+monument of quiet drollery, _Bradshaw's Railway Guide_. So with
+the hero of my story.
+
+Frederick Wackerbath Bradshaw was, as I have pointed out, my
+contemporary at St Austin's. We were in the same House, and together we
+sported on the green--and elsewhere--and did our best to turn the
+majority of the staff of masters into confirmed pessimists, they in the
+meantime endeavouring to do the same by us with every weapon that lay
+to their hand. And the worst of these weapons were the end-of-term
+examination papers. Mellish was our form-master, and once a term a
+demon entered into Mellish. He brooded silently apart from the madding
+crowd. He wandered through dry places seeking rest, and at intervals he
+would smile evilly, and jot down a note on the back of an envelope.
+These notes, collected and printed closely on the vilest paper, made up
+the examination questions.
+
+Our form read two authors a term, one Latin and one Greek. It was the
+Greek that we feared most. Mellish had a sort of genius for picking out
+absolutely untranslatable passages, and desiring us (in print) to
+render the same with full notes. This term the book had been
+Thucydides, Book II, with regard to which I may echo the words of a
+certain critic when called upon to give his candid opinion of a
+friend's first novel, 'I dare not say what I think about that book.'
+
+About a week before the commencement of the examinations, the ordinary
+night-work used to cease, and we were supposed, during that week, to be
+steadily going over the old ground and arming ourselves for the
+approaching struggle. There were, I suppose, people who actually did do
+this, but for my own part I always used to regard those seven days as a
+blessed period of rest, set apart specially to enable me to keep
+abreast of the light fiction of the day. And most of the form, so far
+as I know, thought the same. It was only on the night before the
+examination that one began to revise in real earnest. One's methods on
+that night resolved themselves into sitting in a chair and wondering
+where to begin. Just as one came to a decision, it was bedtime.
+
+'Bradshaw,' I said, as I reached page 103 without having read a line,
+'do you know any likely bits?'
+
+Bradshaw looked up from his book. He was attempting to get a general
+idea of Thucydides' style by reading _Pickwick_.
+
+'What?' he said.
+
+I obliged with a repetition of my remark.
+
+'Likely bits? Oh, you mean for the Thucydides. I don't know. Mellish
+never sets the bits any decent ordinary individual would set. I should
+take my chance if I were you.'
+
+'What are you going to do?'
+
+'I'm going to read _Pickwick_. Thicksides doesn't come within a
+mile of it.'
+
+I thought so too.
+
+'But how about tomorrow?'
+
+'Oh, I shan't be there,' he said, as if it were the most ordinary of
+statements.
+
+'Not there! Why, have you been sacked?'
+
+This really seemed the only possible explanation. Such an event would
+not have come as a surprise. It was always a matter for wonder to me
+_why_ the authorities never sacked Bradshaw, or at the least
+requested him to leave. Possibly it was another case of the ass and the
+bundles of hay. They could not make up their minds which special
+misdemeanour of his to attack first.
+
+'No, I've not been sacked,' said Bradshaw.
+
+A light dawned upon me.
+
+'Oh,' I said, 'you're going to slumber in.' For the benefit of the
+uninitiated, I may mention that to slumber in is to stay in the House
+during school on a pretence of illness.
+
+'That,' replied the man of mystery, with considerable asperity, 'is
+exactly the silly rotten kid's idea that would come naturally to a
+complete idiot like you.'
+
+As a rule, I resent being called a complete idiot, but this was not the
+time for asserting one's personal dignity. I had to know what
+Bradshaw's scheme for evading the examination was. Perhaps there might
+be room for two in it; in which case I should have been exceedingly
+glad to have lent my moral support to it. I pressed for an explanation.
+
+'You may jaw,' said Bradshaw at last, 'as much as you jolly well
+please, but I'm not going to give this away. All you're going to know
+is that I shan't be there tomorrow.'
+
+'I bet you are, and I bet you do a jolly rank paper too,' I said,
+remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to
+which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance,
+always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre
+chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an
+empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He took me up at once.
+
+'What'll you bet?' he said.
+
+Now I was prepared to wager imaginary sums to any extent he might have
+cared to name, but as my actual worldly wealth at that moment consisted
+of one penny, and my expectations were limited to the shilling
+pocket-money which I should receive on the following Saturday--half of
+which was already mortgaged--it behoved me to avoid doing anything rash
+with my ready money. But, since a refusal would have meant the downfall
+of my arguments, I was obliged to name a figure. I named an even
+sixpence. After all, I felt, I must win. By what means, other than
+illness, could Bradshaw possibly avoid putting in an appearance at the
+Thucydides examination?
+
+'All right,' said Bradshaw, 'an even sixpence. You'll lose.'
+
+'Slumbering in barred.'
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'Real illness barred too,' I said. Bradshaw is a man of resource, and
+has been known to make himself genuinely ill in similar emergencies.
+
+'Right you are. Slumbering in and real illness both barred. Anything
+else you'd like to bar?'
+
+I thought.
+
+'No. Unless--' an idea struck me--'You're not going to run away?'
+
+Bradshaw scorned to answer the question.
+
+'Now you'd better buck up with your work,' he said, opening his book
+again. 'You've got about as long odds as anyone ever got. But you'll
+lose all the same.'
+
+It scarcely seemed possible. And yet--Bradshaw was generally right. If
+he said he had a scheme for doing--though it was generally for not
+doing--something, it rarely failed to come off. I thought of my
+sixpence, my only sixpence, and felt a distinct pang of remorse. After
+all, only the other day the chaplain had said how wrong it was to bet.
+By Jove, so he had. Decent man the chaplain. Pity to do anything he
+would disapprove of. I was on the point of recalling my wager, when
+before my mind's eye rose a vision of Bradshaw rampant and sneering,
+and myself writhing in my chair a crushed and scored-off wreck. I drew
+the line at that. I valued my self-respect at more than sixpence. If it
+had been a shilling now--. So I set my teeth and turned once more to my
+Thucydides. Bradshaw, having picked up the thread of his story again,
+emitted hoarse chuckles like minute guns, until I very nearly rose and
+fell upon him. It is maddening to listen to a person laughing and not
+to know the joke.
+
+'You will be allowed two hours for this paper,' said Mellish on the
+following afternoon, as he returned to his desk after distributing the
+Thucydides questions. 'At five minutes to four I shall begin to collect
+your papers, but those who wish may go on till ten past. Write only on
+one side of the paper, and put your names in the top right-hand corner.
+Marks will be given for neatness. Any boy whom I see looking at his
+neighbour's--_where's Bradshaw?_'
+
+It was already five minutes past the hour. The latest of the late
+always had the decency to appear at least by three minutes past.
+
+'Has anybody seen Bradshaw?' repeated Mellish. 'You,
+what's-your-name--' (I am what's-your-name, very much at your
+service) '--you are in his House. Have you seen him?'
+
+I could have pointed out with some pleasure at this juncture that if
+Cain expressed indignation at being asked where his brother was, I, by
+a simple sum in proportion, might with even greater justice feel
+annoyed at having to locate a person who was no relative of mine at
+all. Did Mr Mellish expect me to keep an eye on every member of my
+House? Did Mr Mellish--in short, what did he mean by it?
+
+This was what I thought. I said, 'No, sir.'
+
+'This is extraordinary,' said Mellish, 'most extraordinary. Why, the
+boy was in school this morning.'
+
+This was true. The boy had been in school that morning to some purpose,
+having beaten all records (his own records) in the gentle sport of
+Mellish-baiting. This evidently occurred to Mellish at the time, for he
+dropped the subject at once, and told us to begin our papers.
+
+Now I have remarked already that I dare not say what I think of
+Thucydides, Book II. How then shall I frame my opinion of that
+examination paper? It was Thucydides, Book II, with the few easy parts
+left out. It was Thucydides, Book II, with special home-made
+difficulties added. It was--well, in its way it was a masterpiece.
+Without going into details--I dislike sensational and realistic
+writing--I may say that I personally was not one of those who required
+an extra ten minutes to finish their papers. I finished mine at
+half-past two, and amused myself for the remaining hour and a half by
+writing neatly on several sheets of foolscap exactly what I thought of
+Mr Mellish, and precisely what I hoped would happen to him some day. It
+was grateful and comforting.
+
+At intervals I wondered what had become of Bradshaw. I was not
+surprised at his absence. At first I had feared that he would keep his
+word in that matter. As time went on I knew that he would. At more
+frequent intervals I wondered how I should enjoy being a bankrupt.
+
+Four o'clock came round, and found me so engrossed in putting the
+finishing touches to my excursus of Mr Mellish's character, that I
+stayed on in the form-room till ten past. Two other members of the form
+stayed too, writing with the despairing energy of those who had five
+minutes to say what they would like to spread over five hours. At last
+Mellish collected the papers. He seemed a trifle surprised when I gave
+up my modest three sheets. Brown and Morrison, who had their eye on the
+form prize, each gave up reams. Brown told me subsequently that he had
+only had time to do sixteen sheets, and wanted to know whether I had
+adopted Rutherford's emendation in preference to the old reading in
+Question II. My prolonged stay had made him regard me as a possible
+rival.
+
+I dwell upon this part of my story, because it has an important bearing
+on subsequent events. If I had not waited in the form-room I should not
+have gone downstairs just behind Mellish. And if I had not gone
+downstairs just behind Mellish, I should not have been in at the death,
+that is to say the discovery of Bradshaw, and this story would have
+been all beginning and middle, and no ending, for I am certain that
+Bradshaw would never have told me a word. He was a most secretive
+animal.
+
+I went downstairs, as I say, just behind Mellish. St Austin's, you must
+know, is composed of three blocks of buildings, the senior, the middle,
+and the junior, joined by cloisters. We left the senior block by the
+door. To the captious critic this information may seem superfluous, but
+let me tell him that I have left the block in my time, and entered it,
+too, though never, it is true, in the company of a master, in other
+ways. There are windows.
+
+Our procession of two, Mellish leading by a couple of yards, passed
+through the cloisters, and came to the middle block, where the Masters'
+Common Room is. I had no particular reason for going to that block, but
+it was all on my way to the House, and I knew that Mellish hated having
+his footsteps dogged. That Thucydides paper rankled slightly.
+
+In the middle block, at the top of the building, far from the haunts of
+men, is the Science Museum, containing--so I have heard, I have never
+been near the place myself--two stuffed rats, a case of mouldering
+butterflies, and other objects of acute interest. The room has a
+staircase all to itself, and this was the reason why, directly I heard
+shouts proceeding from that staircase, I deduced that they came from
+the Museum. I am like Sherlock Holmes, I don't mind explaining my
+methods.
+
+'Help!' shouted the voice. 'Help!'
+
+The voice was Bradshaw's.
+
+Mellish was talking to M. Gerard, the French master, at the moment. He
+had evidently been telling him of Bradshaw's non-appearance, for at the
+sound of his voice they both spun round, and stood looking at the
+staircase like a couple of pointers.
+
+'Help,' cried the voice again.
+
+Mellish and Gerard bounded up the stairs. I had never seen a French
+master run before. It was a pleasant sight. I followed. As we reached
+the door of the Museum, which was shut, renewed shouts filtered through
+it. Mellish gave tongue.
+
+'Bradshaw!'
+
+'Yes, sir,' from within.
+
+'Are you there?' This I thought, and still think, quite a superfluous
+question.
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Bradshaw.
+
+'What are you doing in there, Bradshaw? Why were you not in school this
+afternoon? Come out at once.' This in deep and thrilling tones.
+
+'Please, sir,' said Bradshaw complainingly, 'I can't open the door.'
+Now, the immediate effect of telling a person that you are unable to
+open a door is to make him try his hand at it. Someone observes that
+there are three things which everyone thinks he can do better than
+anyone else, namely poking a fire, writing a novel, and opening a door.
+
+Gerard was no exception to the rule.
+
+'Can't open the door?' he said. 'Nonsense, nonsense.' And, swooping at
+the handle, he grasped it firmly, and turned it.
+
+At this point he made an attempt, a very spirited attempt, to lower the
+world's record for the standing high jump. I have spoken above of the
+pleasure it gave me to see a French master run. But for good, square
+enjoyment, warranted free from all injurious chemicals, give me a
+French master jumping.
+
+'My dear Gerard,' said the amazed Mellish.
+
+'I have received a shock. Dear me, I have received a most terrible
+shock.'
+
+So had I, only of another kind. I really thought I should have expired
+in my tracks with the effort of keeping my enjoyment strictly to
+myself. I saw what had happened. The Museum is lit by electric light.
+To turn it on one has to shoot the bolt of the door, which, like the
+handle, is made of metal. It is on the killing two birds with one stone
+principle. You lock yourself in and light yourself up with one
+movement. It was plain that the current had gone wrong somehow, run
+amock, as it were. Mellish meanwhile, instead of being warned by
+Gerard's fate, had followed his example, and tried to turn the handle.
+His jump, though quite a creditable effort, fell short of Gerard's by
+some six inches. I began to feel as if some sort of round game were
+going on. I hoped that they would not want me to take a hand. I also
+hoped that the thing would continue for a good while longer. The
+success of the piece certainly warranted the prolongation of its run.
+But here I was disappointed. The disturbance had attracted another
+spectator, Blaize, the science and chemistry master. The matter was
+hastily explained to him in all its bearings. There was Bradshaw
+entombed within the Museum, with every prospect of death by starvation,
+unless he could support life for the next few years on the two stuffed
+rats and the case of butterflies. The authorities did not see their way
+to adding a human specimen (youth's size) to the treasures in the
+Museum, _so_--how was he to be got out?
+
+The scientific mind is equal to every emergency.
+
+'Bradshaw,' shouted Blaize through the keyhole.
+
+'Sir?'
+
+'Are you there?'
+
+I should imagine that Bradshaw was growing tired of this question by
+this time. Besides, it cast aspersions on the veracity of Gerard and
+Mellish. Bradshaw, with perfect politeness, hastened to inform the
+gentleman that he was there.
+
+'Have you a piece of paper?'
+
+'Will an envelope do, sir?'
+
+'Bless the boy, anything will do so long as it is paper.'
+
+Dear me, I thought, is it as bad as all that? Is Blaize, in despair of
+ever rescuing the unfortunate prisoner, going to ask him to draw up a
+'last dying words' document, to be pushed under the door and despatched
+to his sorrowing guardian?
+
+'Put it over your hand, and then shoot back the bolt.'
+
+'But, sir, the electricity.'
+
+'Pooh, boy!'
+
+The scientific mind is always intolerant of lay ignorance.
+
+'Pooh, boy, paper is a non-conductor. You won't get hurt.'
+
+Bradshaw apparently acted on his instructions. From the other side of
+the door came the sharp sound of the bolt as it was shot back, and at
+the same time the light ceased to shine through the keyhole. A moment
+later the handle turned, and Bradshaw stepped forth--free!
+
+'Dear me,' said Mellish. 'Now I never knew that before, Blaize.
+Remarkable. But this ought to be seen to. In the meantime, I had better
+ask the Headmaster to give out that the Museum is closed until further
+notice, I think.'
+
+And closed the Museum has been ever since. That further notice has
+never been given. And yet nobody seems to feel as if an essential part
+of their life had ceased to be, so to speak. Curious. Bradshaw, after a
+short explanation, was allowed to go away without a stain--that is to
+say, without any additional stain--on his character. We left the
+authorities discussing the matter, and went downstairs.
+
+'Sixpence isn't enough,' I said, 'take this penny. It's all I've got.
+You shall have the sixpence on Saturday.'
+
+'Thanks,' said Bradshaw.' Was the Thucydides paper pretty warm?'
+
+'Warmish. But, I say, didn't you get a beastly shock when you locked
+the door?'
+
+'I did the week before last, the first time I ever went to the place.
+This time I was more or less prepared for it. Blaize seems to think
+that paper dodge a special invention of his own. He'll be taking out a
+patent for it one of these days. Why, every kid knows that paper
+doesn't conduct electricity.'
+
+'I didn't,' I said honestly.
+
+'You don't know much,' said Bradshaw, with equal honesty.
+
+'I don't,' I replied. 'Bradshaw, you're a great man, but you missed the
+best part of it all.'
+
+'What, the Thucydides paper?' asked he with a grin.
+
+'No, you missed seeing Gerard jump quite six feet.'
+
+Bradshaw's face expressed keen disappointment.
+
+'No, did he really? Oh, I say, I wish I'd seen it.'
+
+The moral of which is that the wicked do not always prosper. If
+Bradshaw had not been in the Museum, he might have seen Gerard jump six
+feet, which would have made him happy for weeks. On second thoughts,
+though, that does not work out quite right, for if Bradshaw had not
+been in the Museum, Gerard would not have jumped at all. No, better put
+it this way. I was virtuous, and I had the pleasure of witnessing the
+sight I have referred to. But then there was the Thucydides paper,
+which Bradshaw missed but which I did not. No. On consideration, the
+moral of this story shall be withdrawn and submitted to a committee of
+experts. Perhaps they will be able to say what it is.
+
+
+
+
+[7]
+
+THE BABE AND THE DRAGON
+
+
+The annual inter-house football cup at St Austin's lay between Dacre's,
+who were the holders, and Merevale's, who had been runner-up in the
+previous year, and had won it altogether three times out of the last
+five. The cup was something of a tradition in Merevale's, but of late
+Dacre's had become serious rivals, and, as has been said before, were
+the present holders.
+
+This year there was not much to choose between the two teams. Dacre's
+had three of the First Fifteen and two of the Second; Merevale's two of
+the First and four of the Second. St Austin's being not altogether a
+boarding-school, many of the brightest stars of the teams were day
+boys, and there was, of course, always the chance that one of these
+would suddenly see the folly of his ways, reform, and become a member
+of a House.
+
+This frequently happened, and this year it was almost certain to happen
+again, for no less a celebrity than MacArthur, commonly known as the
+Babe, had been heard to state that he was negotiating with his parents
+to that end. Which House he would go to was at present uncertain. He
+did not know himself, but it would, he said, probably be one of the two
+favourites for the cup. This lent an added interest to the competition,
+for the presence of the Babe would almost certainly turn the scale. The
+Babe's nationality was Scots, and, like most Scotsmen, he could play
+football more than a little. He was the safest, coolest centre
+three-quarter the School had, or had had for some time. He shone in all
+branches of the game, but especially in tackling. To see the Babe
+spring apparently from nowhere, in the middle of an inter-school match,
+and bring down with violence a man who had passed the back, was an
+intellectual treat. Both Dacre's and Merevale's, therefore, yearned for
+his advent exceedingly. The reasons which finally decided his choice
+were rather curious. They arose in the following manner:
+
+The Babe's sister was at Girton. A certain Miss Florence Beezley was
+also at Girton. When the Babe's sister revisited the ancestral home at
+the end of the term, she brought Miss Beezley with her to spend a week.
+What she saw in Miss Beezley was to the Babe a matter for wonder, but
+she must have liked her, or she would not have gone out of her way to
+seek her company. Be that as it may, the Babe would have gone a very
+long way out of his way to avoid her company. He led a fine, healthy,
+out-of-doors life during that week, and doubtless did himself a lot of
+good. But times will occur when it is imperative that a man shall be
+under the family roof. Meal-times, for instance. The Babe could not
+subsist without food, and he was obliged, Miss Beezley or no Miss
+Beezley, to present himself on these occasions. This, by the way, was
+in the Easter holidays, so that there was no school to give him an
+excuse for absence.
+
+Breakfast was a nightmare, lunch was rather worse, and as for dinner,
+it was quite unspeakable. Miss Beezley seemed to gather force during
+the day. It was not the actual presence of the lady that revolted the
+Babe, for that was passable enough. It was her conversation that
+killed. She refused to let the Babe alone. She was intensely learned
+herself, and seemed to take a morbid delight in dissecting his
+ignorance, and showing everybody the pieces. Also, she persisted in
+calling him Mr MacArthur in a way that seemed somehow to point out and
+emphasize his youthfulness. She added it to her remarks as a sort of
+after-thought or echo.
+
+'Do you read Browning, Mr MacArthur?' she would say suddenly, having
+apparently waited carefully until she saw that his mouth was full.
+
+The Babe would swallow convulsively, choke, blush, and finally say--
+
+'No, not much.'
+
+'Ah!' This in a tone of pity not untinged with scorn.
+
+'When you say "not much", Mr MacArthur, what exactly do you mean? Have
+you read any of his poems?'
+
+'Oh, yes, one or two.'
+
+'Ah! Have you read "Pippa Passes"?'
+
+'No, I think not.'
+
+'Surely you must know, Mr MacArthur, whether you have or not. Have you
+read "Fifine at the Fair"?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Have you read "Sordello"?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'What _have_ you read, Mr MacArthur?'
+
+Brought to bay in this fashion, he would have to admit that he had read
+'The Pied Piper of Hamelin', and not a syllable more, and Miss Beezley
+would look at him for a moment and sigh softly. The Babe's subsequent
+share in the conversation, provided the Dragon made no further
+onslaught, was not large.
+
+One never-to-be-forgotten day, shortly before the end of her visit, a
+series of horrible accidents resulted in their being left to lunch
+together alone. The Babe had received no previous warning, and when he
+was suddenly confronted with this terrible state of affairs he almost
+swooned. The lady's steady and critical inspection of his style of
+carving a chicken completed his downfall. His previous experience of
+carving had been limited to those entertainments which went by the name
+of 'study-gorges', where, if you wanted to help a chicken, you took
+hold of one leg, invited an accomplice to attach himself to the other,
+and pulled.
+
+But, though unskilful, he was plucky and energetic. He lofted the bird
+out of the dish on to the tablecloth twice in the first minute.
+Stifling a mad inclination to call out 'Fore!' or something to that
+effect, he laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh, and replaced the errant
+fowl. When a third attack ended in the same way, Miss Beezley asked
+permission to try what she could do. She tried, and in two minutes the
+chicken was neatly dismembered. The Babe re-seated himself in an
+over-wrought state.
+
+'Tell me about St Austin's, Mr MacArthur,' said Miss Beezley, as the
+Babe was trying to think of something to say--not about the weather.
+'Do you play football?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+A prolonged silence.
+
+'Do you--' began the Babe at last.
+
+'Tell me--' began Miss Beezley, simultaneously.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said the Babe; 'you were saying--?'
+
+'Not at all, Mr MacArthur. _You_ were saying--?'
+
+'I was only going to ask you if you played croquet?'
+
+'Yes; do you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+'If this is going to continue,' thought the Babe, 'I shall be
+reluctantly compelled to commit suicide.'
+
+There was another long pause.
+
+'Tell me the names of some of the masters at St Austin's, Mr
+MacArthur,' said Miss Beezley. She habitually spoke as if she were an
+examination paper, and her manner might have seemed to some to verge
+upon the autocratic, but the Babe was too thankful that the question
+was not on Browning or the higher algebra to notice this. He reeled off
+a list of names.
+
+'... Then there's Merevale--rather a decent sort--and Dacre.'
+
+'What sort of a man is Mr Dacre?'
+
+'Rather a rotter, I think.'
+
+'What is a rotter, Mr MacArthur?'
+
+'Well, I don't know how to describe it exactly. He doesn't play cricket
+or anything. He's generally considered rather a crock.'
+
+'Really! This is very interesting, Mr MacArthur. And what is a crock? I
+suppose what it comes to,' she added, as the Babe did his best to find
+a definition, 'is this, that you yourself dislike him.' The Babe
+admitted the impeachment. Mr Dacre had a finished gift of sarcasm which
+had made him writhe on several occasions, and sarcastic masters are
+rarely very popular.
+
+'Ah!' said Miss Beezley. She made frequent use of that monosyllable. It
+generally gave the Babe the same sort of feeling as he had been
+accustomed to experience in the happy days of his childhood when he had
+been caught stealing jam.
+
+Miss Beezley went at last, and the Babe felt like a convict who has
+just received a free pardon.
+
+One afternoon in the following term he was playing fives with
+Charteris, a prefect in Merevale's House. Charteris was remarkable from
+the fact that he edited and published at his own expense an unofficial
+and highly personal paper, called _The Glow Worm_, which was a
+great deal more in demand than the recognized School magazine, _The
+Austinian_, and always paid its expenses handsomely.
+
+Charteris had the journalistic taint very badly. He was always the
+first to get wind of any piece of School news. On this occasion he was
+in possession of an exclusive item. The Babe was the first person to
+whom he communicated it.
+
+'Have you heard the latest romance in high life, Babe?' he observed, as
+they were leaving the court. 'But of course you haven't. You never do
+hear anything.'
+
+'Well?' asked the Babe, patiently.
+
+'You know Dacre?'
+
+'I seem to have heard the name somewhere.'
+
+'He's going to be married.'
+
+'Yes. Don't trouble to try and look interested. You're one of those
+offensive people who mind their own business and nobody else's. Only I
+thought I'd tell you. Then you'll have a remote chance of understanding
+my quips on the subject in next week's _Glow Worm_. You laddies
+frae the north have to be carefully prepared for the subtler flights of
+wit.'
+
+'Thanks,' said the Babe, placidly. 'Good-night.'
+
+The Headmaster intercepted the Babe a few days after he was going home
+after a scratch game of football. 'MacArthur,' said he, 'you pass Mr
+Dacre's House, do you not, on your way home? Then would you mind asking
+him from me to take preparation tonight? I find I shall be unable to be
+there.' It was the custom at St Austin's for the Head to preside at
+preparation once a week; but he performed this duty, like the
+celebrated Irishman, as often as he could avoid it.
+
+The Babe accepted the commission. He was shown into the drawing-room.
+To his consternation, for he was not a society man, there appeared to
+be a species of tea-party going on. As the door opened, somebody was
+just finishing a remark.
+
+'... faculty which he displayed in such poems as "Sordello",' said the
+voice.
+
+The Babe knew that voice.
+
+He would have fled if he had been able, but the servant was already
+announcing him. Mr Dacre began to do the honours.
+
+'Mr MacArthur and I have met before,' said Miss Beezley, for it was
+she. 'Curiously enough, the subject which we have just been discussing
+is one in which he takes, I think, a great interest. I was saying, Mr
+MacArthur, when you came in, that few of Tennyson's works show the
+poetic faculty which Browning displays in "Sordello".'
+
+The Babe looked helplessly at Mr Dacre.
+
+'I think you are taking MacArthur out of his depth there,' said Mr
+Dacre. 'Was there something you wanted to see me about, MacArthur?'
+
+The Babe delivered his message.
+
+'Oh, yes, certainly,' said Mr Dacre. 'Shall you be passing the School
+House tonight? If so, you might give the Headmaster my compliments, and
+say I shall be delighted.'
+
+The Babe had had no intention of going out of his way to that extent,
+but the chance of escape offered by the suggestion was too good to be
+missed. He went.
+
+On his way he called at Merevale's, and asked to see Charteris.
+
+'Look here, Charteris,' he said, 'you remember telling me that Dacre
+was going to be married?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Well, do you know her name by any chance?'
+
+'I ken it weel, ma braw Hielander. She is a Miss Beezley.'
+
+'Great Scott!' said the Babe.
+
+'Hullo! Why, was your young heart set in that direction? You amaze and
+pain me, Babe. I think we'd better have a story on the subject in
+_The Glow Worm_, with you as hero and Dacre as villain. It shall
+end happily, of course. I'll write it myself.'
+
+'You'd better,' said the Babe, grimly. 'Oh, I say, Charteris.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'When I come as a boarder, I shall be a House-prefect, shan't I, as I'm
+in the Sixth?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And prefects have to go to breakfast and supper, and that sort of
+thing, pretty often with the House-beak, don't they?'
+
+'Such are the facts of the case.'
+
+'Thanks. That's all. Go away and do some work. Good-night.'
+
+The cup went to Merevale's that year. The Babe played a singularly
+brilliant game for them.
+
+
+
+
+[8]
+
+THE MANOEUVRES OF CHARTERIS
+
+
+
+_Chapter 1_
+
+'Might I observe, sir--'
+
+'You may observe whatever you like,' said the referee kindly.
+'Twenty-five.'
+
+'The rules say--'
+
+'I have given my decision. Twenty-_five_!' A spot of red appeared
+on the official cheek. The referee, who had been heckled since the
+kick-off, was beginning to be annoyed.
+
+'The ball went behind without bouncing, and the rules say--'
+
+'Twenty-FIVE!!' shouted the referee. 'I am perfectly well aware what
+the rules say.' And he blew his whistle with an air of finality. The
+secretary of the Bargees' F.C. subsided reluctantly, and the game was
+restarted.
+
+The Bargees' match was a curious institution. Their real name was the
+Old Crockfordians. When, a few years before, the St Austin's secretary
+had received a challenge from them, dated from Stapleton, where their
+secretary happened to reside, he had argued within himself as follows:
+'This sounds all right. Old Crockfordians? Never heard of Crockford.
+Probably some large private school somewhere. Anyhow, they're certain
+to be decent fellows.' And he arranged the fixture. It then transpired
+that Old Crockford was a village, and, from the appearance of the team
+on the day of battle, the Old Crockfordians seemed to be composed
+exclusively of the riff-raff of same. They wore green shirts with a
+bright yellow leopard over the heart, and C.F.C. woven in large letters
+about the chest. One or two of the outsides played in caps, and the
+team to a man criticized the referee's decisions with point and
+pungency. Unluckily, the first year saw a weak team of Austinians
+rather badly beaten, with the result that it became a point of honour
+to wipe this off the slate before the fixture could be cut out of the
+card. The next year was also unlucky. The Bargees managed to score a
+penalty goal in the first half, and won on that. The match resulted in
+a draw in the following season, and by this time the thing had become
+an annual event.
+
+Now, however, the School was getting some of its own back. The Bargees
+had brought down a player of some reputation from the North, and were
+as strong as ever in the scrum. But St Austin's had a great team, and
+were carrying all before them. Charteris and Graham at half had the
+ball out to their centres in a way which made Merevale, who looked
+after the football of the School, feel that life was worth living. And
+when once it was out, things happened rapidly. MacArthur, the captain
+of the team, with Thomson as his fellow-centre, and Welch and Bannister
+on the wings, did what they liked with the Bargees' three-quarters. All
+the School outsides had scored, even the back, who dropped a neat goal.
+The player from the North had scarcely touched the ball during the
+whole game, and altogether the Bargees were becoming restless and
+excited.
+
+The kick-off from the twenty-five line which followed upon the small
+discussion alluded to above, reached Graham. Under ordinary
+circumstances he would have kicked, but in a winning game original
+methods often pay. He dodged a furious sportsman in green and yellow,
+and went away down the touch-line. He was almost through when he
+stumbled. He recovered himself, but too late. Before he could pass,
+someone was on him. Graham was not heavy, and his opponent was
+muscular. He was swung off his feet, and the next moment the two came
+down together, Graham underneath. A sharp pain shot through his
+shoulder.
+
+A doctor emerged from the crowd--there is always a doctor in a
+crowd--and made an examination.
+
+'Anything bad?' asked the referee.
+
+'Collar-bone,' said the doctor. 'The usual, you know. Rather badly
+smashed. Nothing dangerous, of course. Be all right in a month or so.
+Stop his playing. Rather a pity. Much longer before half-time?'
+
+'No. I was just going to blow the whistle when this happened.'
+
+The injured warrior was carried off, and the referee blew his whistle
+for half-time.
+
+'I say, Charteris,' said MacArthur, 'who the deuce am I to put half
+instead of Graham?'
+
+'Rogers used to play half in his childhood, I believe. But, I say, did
+you ever see such a scrag? Can't you protest, or something?'
+
+'My dear chap, how can I? It's on our own ground. These Bargee beasts
+are visitors, if you come to think of it. I'd like to wring the chap's
+neck who did it. I didn't spot who it was. Did you see?'
+
+'Rather. Their secretary. That man with the beard. I'll get Prescott to
+mark him this half.'
+
+Prescott was the hardest tackler in the School. He accepted the
+commission cheerfully, and promised to do his best by the bearded one.
+
+Charteris certainly gave him every opportunity. When he threw the ball
+out of touch, he threw it neatly to the criminal with the beard, and
+Prescott, who stuck to him closer than a brother, had generally tackled
+him before he knew what had happened. After a time he began to grow
+thoughtful, and when there was a line-out went and stood among the
+three-quarters. In this way much of Charteris's righteous retribution
+miscarried, but once or twice he had the pleasure and privilege of
+putting in a piece of tackling on his own account. The match ended with
+the enemy still intact, but considerably shaken. He was also rather
+annoyed. He spoke to Charteris on the subject as they were leaving the
+field.
+
+'I was watching you,' he said, _apropos_ of nothing apparently.
+
+'That must have been nice for you,' said Charteris.
+
+'You wait.'
+
+'Certainly. Any time you're passing, I'm sure--'
+
+'You ain't 'eard the last of me yet.'
+
+'That's something of a blow,' said Charteris cheerfully, and they
+parted.
+
+Charteris, having got into his blazer, ran after Welch and MacArthur,
+and walked back with them to the House. All three of them were at
+Merevale's.
+
+'Poor old Tony,' said MacArthur. 'Where have they taken him to? The
+House?'
+
+'Yes,' said Welch. 'I say, Babe, you ought to scratch this match next
+year. Tell 'em the card's full up or something.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know. One expects fairly rough play in this sort of game.
+After all, we tackle pretty hard ourselves. I know I always try and go
+my hardest. If the man happens to be brittle, that's his lookout,'
+concluded the bloodthirsty Babe.
+
+'My dear man,' said Charteris, 'there's all the difference between a
+decent tackle and a bally scrag like the one that doubled Tony up. You
+can't break a chap's collar-bone without trying to.'
+
+'Well, if you come to think of it, I suppose the man must have been
+fairly riled. You can't expect a man to be in an angelic temper when
+his side's been licked by thirty points.'
+
+The Babe was one of those thoroughly excellent persons who always try,
+when possible, to make allowances for everybody.
+
+'Well, dash it,' said Charteris indignantly, 'if he had lost his hair
+he might have drawn the line at falling on Tony like that. It wasn't
+the tackling part of it that crocked him. The beast simply jumped on
+him like a Hooligan. Anyhow, I made him sit up a bit before we
+finished. I gave Prescott the tip to mark him out of touch. Have you
+ever been collared by Prescott? It's a liberal education. Now, there
+you are, you see. Take Prescott. He's never crocked a man seriously in
+his life. I don't count being winded. That's absolutely an accident.
+Well, there you are, then. Prescott weighs thirteen-ten, and he's all
+muscle, and he goes like a battering-ram. You'll own that. He goes as
+hard as he jolly well knows how, and yet the worst he has ever done is
+to lay a man out for a couple of minutes while he gets his wind back.
+Well, compare him with this Bargee man. The Bargee weighs a stone less
+and isn't nearly as strong, and yet he smashes Tony's collar-bone. It's
+all very well, Babe, but you can't get away from it. Prescott tackles
+fairly and the Bargee scrags.'
+
+'Yes,' said MacArthur, 'I suppose you're right.'
+
+'Rather,' said Charteris. 'I wish I'd broken his neck.'
+
+'By the way,' said Welch, 'you were talking to him after the match.
+What was he saying?'
+
+Charteris laughed.
+
+'By Jove, I'd forgotten; he said I hadn't heard the last of him, and
+that I was to wait.'
+
+'What did you say?'
+
+'Oh, I behaved beautifully. I asked him to be sure and look in any time
+he was passing, and after a few chatty remarks we parted.'
+
+'I wonder if he meant anything.'
+
+'I believe he means to waylay me with a buckled belt. I shan't stir out
+except with the Old Man or some other competent bodyguard. "'Orrible
+outrage, shocking death of a St Austin's schoolboy." It would look
+rather well on the posters.'
+
+Welch stuck strenuously to the point.
+
+'No, but, look here, Charteris,' he said seriously, 'I'm not rotting.
+You see, the man lives in Stapleton, and if he knows anything of School
+rules--'
+
+'Which he doesn't probably. Why should he? Well?'--'If he knows
+anything of the rules, he'll know that Stapleton's out of bounds, and
+he may book you there and run you in to Merevale.'
+
+'Yes,' said MacArthur. 'I tell you what, you'd do well to knock off a
+few of your expeditions to Stapleton. You know you wouldn't go there
+once a month if it wasn't out of bounds. You'll be a prefect next term.
+I should wait till then, if I were you.'
+
+'My dear chap, what does it matter? The worst that can happen to you
+for breaking bounds is a couple of hundred lines, and I've got a
+capital of four hundred already in stock. Besides, things would be so
+slow if you always kept in bounds. I always feel like a cross between
+Dick Turpin and Machiavelli when I go to Stapleton. It's an awfully
+jolly feeling. Like warm treacle running down your back. It's cheap at
+two hundred lines.'
+
+'You're an awful fool,' said Welch, rudely but correctly.
+
+Welch was a youth who treated the affairs of other people rather too
+seriously. He worried over them. This is not a particularly common
+trait in the character of either boy or man, but Welch had it highly
+developed. He could not probably have explained exactly why he was
+worried, but he undoubtedly was. Welch had a very grave and serious
+mind. He shared a study with Charteris--for Charteris, though not yet a
+School-prefect, was part owner of a study--and close observation had
+convinced him that the latter was not responsible for his actions, and
+that he wanted somebody to look after him. He had therefore elected
+himself to the post of a species of modified and unofficial guardian
+angel to him. The duties were heavy, and the remuneration exceedingly
+light.
+
+'Really, you know,' said MacArthur, 'I don't see what the point of all
+your lunacy is. I don't know if you're aware of it, but the Old Man's
+getting jolly sick with you.'
+
+'I didn't know,' said Charteris, 'but I'm very glad to hear it. For
+hist! I have a ger-rudge against the person. Beneath my ban that mystic
+man shall suffer, _coute que coute_, Matilda. He sat upon
+me--publicly, and the resultant blot on my scutcheon can only be wiped
+out with blood, or broken rules,' he added.
+
+This was true. To listen to Charteris on the subject, one might have
+thought that he considered the matter rather amusing than otherwise.
+This, however, was simply due to the fact that he treated everything
+flippantly in conversation. But, like the parrot, he thought the more.
+The actual _casus belli_ had been trivial. At least the mere
+spectator would have considered it trivial. It had happened after this
+fashion. Charteris was a member of the School corps. The orderly-room
+of the School corps was in the junior part of the School buildings.
+Charteris had been to replace his rifle in that shrine of Mars after a
+mid-day drill, and on coming out into the passage had found himself in
+the middle of a junior school 'rag' of the conventional type.
+Somebody's cap had fallen off, and two hastily picked teams were
+playing football with it (Association rules). Now, Charteris was not a
+prefect (that, it may be observed in passing, was another source of
+bitterness in him towards the Powers, for he was fairly high up in the
+Sixth, and others of his set, Welch, Thomson, and Tony Graham, who were
+also in the Sixth--the two last below him in form order--had already
+received their prefects' caps). Not being a prefect, it would have been
+officious in him to have stopped the game. So he was passing on with
+what Mr Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., would have termed a beaming
+simper of indescribable suavity, when a member of one of the opposing
+teams, in effecting a G. O. Smithian dribble, cannoned into him. To
+preserve his balance--this will probably seem a very thin line of
+defence, but 'I state but the facts'--he grabbed at the disciple of
+Smith amidst applause, and at that precise moment a new actor appeared
+on the scene--the Headmaster. Now, of all the things that lay in his
+province, the Headmaster most disliked to see a senior 'ragging' with a
+junior. He had a great idea of the dignity of the senior school, and
+did all that in him lay to see that it was kept up. The greater number
+of the juniors with whom the senior was found ragging, the more heinous
+the offence. Circumstantial evidence was dead against Charteris. To all
+outward appearances he was one of the players in the impromptu football
+match. The soft and fascinating beams of the simper, to quote Mr
+Jabberjee once more, had not yet faded from the act. A well-chosen word
+or two from the Headmagisterial lips put a premature end to the
+football match, and Charteris was proceeding on his way when the
+Headmaster called him. He stopped. The Headmaster was angry. So angry,
+indeed, that he did what in a more lucid interval he would not have
+done. He hauled a senior over the coals in the hearing of a number of
+juniors, one of whom (unidentified) giggled loudly. As Charteris had on
+previous occasions observed, the Old Man, when he did start to take a
+person's measure, didn't leave out much. The address was not long, but
+it covered a great deal of ground. The section of it which chiefly
+rankled in Charteris's mind, and which had continued to rankle ever
+since, was that in which the use of the word 'buffoon' had occurred.
+Everybody who has a gift of humour and (very naturally) enjoys
+exercising it, hates to be called a buffoon. It was Charteris's one
+weak spot. Every other abusive epithet in the language slid off him
+without penetrating or causing him the least discomfort. The word
+'buffoon' went home, right up to the hilt. And, to borrow from Mr
+Jabberjee for positively the very last time, he had observed
+(mentally): 'Henceforward I will perpetrate heaps of the lowest dregs
+of vice.' He had, in fact, started a perfect bout of breaking rules,
+simply because they were rules. The injustice of the thing rankled. No
+one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have
+been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only
+been found out. To a certain extent, Charteris ran amok. He broke
+bounds and did little work, and--he was beginning gradually to find
+this out--got thoroughly tired of it all. Offended dignity, however,
+still kept him at it, and much as he would have preferred to have
+resumed a less feverish type of existence, he did not do so.
+
+'I have a ger-rudge against the man,' he said.
+
+'You _are_ an idiot, really,' said Welch.
+
+'Welch,' said Charteris, by way of explanation to MacArthur, 'is a lad
+of coarse fibre. He doesn't understand the finer feelings. He can't see
+that I am doing this simply for the Old Man's good. Spare the rod,
+spile the choild. Let's go and have a look at Tony when we're changed.
+He'll be in the sick-room if he's anywhere.'
+
+'All right,' said the Babe, as he went into his study. 'Buck up. I'll
+toss you for first bath in a second.'
+
+Charteris walked on with Welch to their sanctum.
+
+'You know,' said Welch seriously, stooping to unlace his boots,
+'rotting apart, you really are a most awful ass. I wish I could get you
+to see it.'
+
+'Never you mind, ducky,' said Charteris, 'I'm all right. I'll look
+after myself.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 2_
+
+It was about a week after the Bargees' match that the rules respecting
+bounds were made stricter, much to the popular indignation. The penalty
+for visiting Stapleton without leave was increased from two hundred
+lines to two extra lessons. The venomous characteristic of extra lesson
+was that it cut into one's football, for the criminal was turned into a
+form-room from two till four on half-holidays, and so had to scratch
+all athletic engagements for the day, unless he chose to go for a
+solitary run afterwards. In the cricket term the effect of this was not
+so deadly. It was just possible that you might get an innings somewhere
+after four o'clock, even if only at the nets. But during the football
+season--it was now February--to be in extra lesson meant a total loss
+of everything that makes life endurable, and the School protested (to
+one another, in the privacy of their studies) with no uncertain voice
+against this barbarous innovation.
+
+The reason for the change had been simple. At the corner of the High
+Street at Stapleton was a tobacconist's shop, and Mr Prater, strolling
+in one evening to renew his stock of Pioneer, was interested to observe
+P. St H. Harrison, of Merevale's, purchasing a consignment of 'Girl of
+my Heart' cigarettes (at twopence-halfpenny the packet of twenty,
+including a coloured picture of Lord Kitchener). Now, Mr Prater was one
+of the most sportsmanlike of masters. If he had merely met Harrison out
+of bounds, and it had been possible to have overlooked him, he would
+have done so. But such a proceeding in the interior of a small shop was
+impossible. There was nothing to palliate the crime. The tobacconist
+also kept the wolf from the door, and lured the juvenile population of
+the neighbourhood to it, by selling various weird brands of sweets, but
+it was only too obvious that Harrison was not after these. Guilt was in
+his eye, and the packet of cigarettes in his hand. Also Harrison's
+House cap was fixed firmly at the back of his head. Mr Prater finished
+buying his Pioneer, and went out without a word. That night it was
+announced to Harrison that the Headmaster wished to see him. The
+Headmaster saw him, though for a certain period of the interview he did
+not see the Headmaster, having turned his back on him by request. On
+the following day Stapleton was placed doubly out of bounds.
+
+Tony, who was still in bed, had not heard the news when Charteris came
+to see him on the evening of the day on which the edict had gone forth.
+
+'How are you getting on?' asked Charteris.
+
+'Oh, fairly well. It's rather slow.'
+
+'The grub seems all right.' Charteris absently reached out for a slice
+of cake.
+
+'Not bad.'
+
+'And you don't have to do any work.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Well, then, it seems to me you're having a jolly good time. What don't
+you like about it?'
+
+'It's so slow, being alone all day.'
+
+'Makes you appreciate intellectual conversation all the more when you
+get it. Mine, for instance.'
+
+'I want something to read.'
+
+'I'll bring you a Sidgwick's _Greek Prose Composition_, if you
+like. Full of racy stories.'
+
+'I've read 'em, thanks.'
+
+'How about Jebb's _Homer_? You'd like that. Awfully interesting.
+Proves that there never was such a man as Homer, you know, and that the
+_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ were produced by evolution. General
+style, quietly funny. Make you roar.'
+
+'Don't be an idiot. I'm simply starving for something to read. Haven't
+you got anything?'
+
+'You've read all mine.'
+
+'Hasn't Welch got any books?'
+
+'Not one. He bags mine when he wants to read. I'll tell you what I will
+do if you like.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Go into Stapleton, and borrow something from Adamson.' Adamson was the
+College doctor.
+
+'By Jove, that's not a bad idea.'
+
+'It's a dashed good idea, which wouldn't have occurred to anybody but a
+genius. I've been quite a pal of Adamson's ever since I had the flu. I
+go to tea with him occasionally, and we talk medical shop. Have you
+ever tried talking medical shop during tea? Nothing like it for giving
+you an appetite.'
+
+'Has he got anything readable?'
+
+'Rather. Have you ever tried anything of James Payn's?'
+
+'I've read _Terminations_, or something,' said Tony doubtfully,
+'but he's so obscure.'
+
+'Don't,' said Charteris sadly, 'please don't. _Terminations_ is by
+one Henry James, and there is a substantial difference between him and
+James Payn. Anyhow, if you want a short biography of James Payn, he
+wrote a hundred books, and they're all simply ripping, and Adamson has
+got a good many of them, and I'm hoping to borrow a couple--any two
+will do--and you're going to read them. I know one always bars a book
+that's recommended to one, but you've got no choice. You're not going
+to get anything else till you've finished those two.'
+
+'All right,' said Tony. 'But Stapleton's out of bounds. I suppose
+Merevale'll give you leave to go in.'
+
+'He won't,' said Charteris. 'I shan't ask him. On principle. So long.'
+
+On the following afternoon Charteris went into Stapleton. The distance
+by road was almost exactly one mile. If you went by the fields it was
+longer, because you probably lost your way.
+
+Dr Adamson's house was in the High Street. Charteris knocked at the
+door. The servant was sorry, but the doctor was out. Her tone seemed to
+suggest that, if she had had any say in the matter, he would have
+remained in. Would Charteris come in and wait? Charteris rather thought
+he would. He waited for half an hour, and then, as the absent medico
+did not appear to be coming, took two books from the shelf, wrote a
+succinct note explaining what he had done, and why he had done it,
+hoping the doctor would not mind, and went out with his literary
+trophies into the High Street again.
+
+The time was now close on five o'clock. Lock-up was not till a quarter
+past six--six o'clock nominally, but the doors were always left open
+till a quarter past. It would take him about fifteen minutes to get
+back, less if he trotted. Obviously, the thing to do here was to spend
+a thoughtful quarter of an hour or so inspecting the sights of the
+town. These were ordinarily not numerous, but this particular day
+happened to be market day, and there was a good deal going on. The High
+Street was full of farmers, cows, and other animals, the majority of
+the former well on the road to intoxication. It is, of course,
+extremely painful to see a man in such a condition, but when such a
+person is endeavouring to count a perpetually moving drove of pigs, the
+onlooker's pain is sensibly diminished. Charteris strolled along the
+High Street observing these and other phenomena with an attentive eye.
+Opposite the Town Hall he was button-holed by a perfect stranger, whom,
+by his conversation, he soon recognized as the Stapleton 'character'.
+There is a 'character' in every small country town. He is not a bad
+character; still less is he a good character. He is just a 'character'
+pure and simple. This particular man--or rather, this man, for he was
+anything but particular--apparently took a great fancy to Charteris at
+first sight. He backed him gently against a wall, and insisted on
+telling him an interminable anecdote of his shady past, when, it
+seemed, he had been a 'super' in some travelling company. The plot of
+the story, as far as Charteris could follow it, dealt with a theatrical
+tour in Dublin, where some person or persons unknown had, with malice
+prepense, scattered several pounds of snuff on the stage previous to a
+performance of _Hamlet_; and, according to the 'character', when
+the ghost of Hamlet's father sneezed steadily throughout his great
+scene, there was not a dry eye in the house. The 'character' had
+concluded that anecdote, and was half-way through another, when
+Charteris, looking at his watch, found that it was almost six o'clock.
+He interrupted one of the 'character's' periods by diving past him and
+moving rapidly down the street. The historian did not seem to object.
+Charteris looked round and saw that he had button-holed a fresh victim.
+He was still gazing in one direction and walking in another, when he
+ran into somebody.
+
+'Sorry,' said Charteris hastily. 'Hullo!'
+
+It was the secretary of the Old Crockfordians, and, to judge from the
+scowl on that gentleman's face, the recognition was mutual.
+
+'It's you, is it?' said the secretary in his polished way.
+
+'I believe so,' said Charteris.
+
+'Out of bounds,' observed the man.
+
+Charteris was surprised. This grasp of technical lore on the part of a
+total outsider was as unexpected as it was gratifying.
+
+'What do you know about bounds?' said Charteris.
+
+'I know you ain't allowed to come 'ere, and you'll get it 'ot from your
+master for coming.'
+
+'Ah, but he won't know. I shan't tell him, and I'm sure you will
+respect my secret.'
+
+Charteris smiled in a winning manner.
+
+'Ho!' said the man, 'Ho indeed!'
+
+There is something very clinching about the word 'Ho'. It seems
+definitely to apply the closure to any argument. At least, I have never
+yet met anyone who could tell me the suitable repartee.
+
+'Well,' said Charteris affably, 'don't let me keep you. I must be going
+on.'
+
+'Ho!' observed the man once more. 'Ho indeed!'
+
+'That's a wonderfully shrewd remark,' said Charteris. 'I can see that,
+but I wish you'd tell me exactly what it means.'
+
+'You're out of bounds.'
+
+'Your mind seems to run in a groove. You can't get off that bounds
+business. How do you know Stapleton's out of bounds?'
+
+'I have made enquiries,' said the man darkly.
+
+'By Jove,' said Charteris delightedly, 'this is splendid. You're a
+regular sleuth-hound. I dare say you've found out my name and House
+too?'
+
+'I may 'ave,' said the man, 'or I may not 'ave.'
+
+'Well, now you mention it, I suppose one of the two contingencies is
+probable. Well, I'm awfully glad to have met you. Good-bye. I must be
+going.'
+
+'You're goin' with me.'
+
+'Arm in arm?'
+
+'I don't want to _'ave_ to take you.'
+
+'No,' said Charteris, 'I should jolly well advise you not to try. This
+is my way.'
+
+He walked on till he came to the road that led to St Austin's. The
+secretary of the Old Crockfordians stalked beside him with determined
+stride.
+
+'Now,' said Charteris, when they were on the road, 'you mustn't mind if
+I walk rather fast. I'm in a hurry.'
+
+Charteris's idea of walking rather fast was to dash off down the road
+at quarter-mile pace. The move took the man by surprise, but, after a
+moment, he followed with much panting. It was evident that he was not
+in training. Charteris began to feel that the walk home might be
+amusing in its way. After they had raced some three hundred yards he
+slowed down to a walk again. It was at this point that his companion
+evinced a desire to do the rest of the journey with a hand on the
+collar of his coat.
+
+'If you touch me,' observed Charteris with a surprising knowledge of
+legal _minutiae_, 'it'll be a technical assault, and you'll get
+run in; and you'll get beans anyway if you try it on.'
+
+The man reconsidered matters, and elected not to try it on.
+
+Half a mile from the College Charteris began to walk rather fast again.
+He was a good half-miler, and his companion was bad at every distance.
+After a game struggle he dropped to the rear, and finished a hundred
+yards behind in considerable straits. Charteris shot in at Merevale's
+door with five minutes to spare, and went up to his study to worry
+Welch by telling him about it.
+
+'Welch, you remember the Bargee who scragged Tony? Well, there have
+been all sorts of fresh developments. He's just been pacing me all the
+way from Stapleton.'
+
+'Stapleton! Have you been to Stapleton? Did Merevale give you leave?'
+
+'No. I didn't ask him.'
+
+'You _are_ an idiot. And now this Bargee man will go straight to
+the Old Man and run you in. I wonder you didn't think of that.'
+
+'Curious I didn't.'
+
+'I suppose he saw you come in here?'
+
+'Rather. He couldn't have had a better view if he'd paid for a seat.
+Half a second; I must just run up with these volumes to Tony.'
+
+When he came back he found Welch more serious than ever.
+
+'I told you so,' said Welch. 'You're to go to the Old Man at once. He's
+just sent over for you. I say, look here, if it's only lines I don't
+mind doing some of them, if you like.'
+
+Charteris was quite touched by this sporting offer.
+
+'It's awfully good of you,' he said, 'but it doesn't matter, really. I
+shall be all right.'
+
+Ten minutes later he returned, beaming.
+
+'Well,' said Welch, 'what's he given you?'
+
+'Only his love, to give to you. It was this way. He first asked me if I
+wasn't perfectly aware that Stapleton was out of bounds. "Sir," says I,
+"I've known it from childhood's earliest hour." "Ah," says he to me,
+"did Mr Merevale give you leave to go in this afternoon?" "No," says I,
+"I never consulted the gent you mention."'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Then he ragged me for ten minutes, and finally told me I must go into
+extra the next two Saturdays.'
+
+'I thought so.'
+
+'Ah, but mark the sequel. When he had finished, I said that I was sorry
+I had mistaken the rules, but I had thought that a chap was allowed to
+go into Stapleton if he got leave from a master. "But you said that Mr
+Merevale did not give you leave," said he. "Friend of my youth," I
+replied courteously, "you are perfectly correct. As always. Mr Merevale
+did not give me leave, but," I added suavely, "Mr Dacre did." And I
+came away, chanting hymns of triumph in a mellow baritone, and leaving
+him in a dead faint on the sofa. And the Bargee, who was present during
+the conflict, swiftly and silently vanished away, his morale
+considerably shattered. And that, my gentle Welch,' concluded Charteris
+cheerfully, 'put me one up. So pass the biscuits, and let us rejoice if
+we never rejoice again.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 3_
+
+The Easter term was nearing its end. Football, with the exception of
+the final House-match, which had still to come off, was over, and life
+was in consequence a trifle less exhilarating than it might have been.
+In some ways the last few weeks before the Easter holidays are quite
+pleasant. You can put on running shorts and a blazer and potter about
+the grounds, feeling strong and athletic, and delude yourself into the
+notion that you are training for the sports. Ten minutes at the broad
+jump, five with the weight, a few sprints on the track--it is all very
+amusing and harmless, but it is apt to become monotonous after a time.
+And if the weather is at all inclined to be chilly, such an occupation
+becomes impossible.
+
+Charteris found things particularly dull. He was a fair average runner,
+but there were others far better at every distance, so that he saw no
+use in mortifying the flesh with strict training. On the other hand, in
+view of the fact that the final House-match had yet to be played, and
+that Merevale's was one of the two teams that were going to play it, it
+behoved him to keep himself at least moderately fit. The genial muffin
+and the cheery crumpet were still things to be avoided. He thus found
+himself in a position where, apparently, the few things which it was
+possible for him to do were barred, and the net result was that he felt
+slightly dull.
+
+To make matters worse, all the rest of his set were working full time
+at their various employments, and had no leisure for amusing him. Welch
+practised hundred-yard sprints daily, and imagined that it would be
+quite a treat for Charteris to be allowed to time him. So he gave him
+the stopwatch, saw him safely to the end of the track, and at a given
+signal dashed off in the approved American style. By the time he
+reached the tape, dutifully held by two sporting Merevalian juniors,
+Charteris's attention had generally been attracted elsewhere. 'What
+time?' Welch would pant. 'By Jove,' Charteris would observe blandly, 'I
+forgot to look. About a minute and a quarter, I fancy.' At which Welch,
+who always had a notion that he had done it in ten and a fifth
+_that_ time, at any rate, would dissemble his joy, and mildly
+suggest that somebody else should hold the watch. Then there was Jim
+Thomson, generally a perfect mine of elevating conversation. He was in
+for the mile and also the half, and refused to talk about anything
+except those distances, and the best methods for running them in the
+minimum of time. Charteris began to feel a blue melancholy stealing
+over him. The Babe, again. He might have helped to while away the long
+hours, but unfortunately the Babe had been taken very bad with a notion
+that he was going to win the 'cross-country run, and when, in addition
+to this, he was seized with a panic with regard to the prospects of the
+House team in the final, and began to throw out hints concerning strict
+training, Charteris regarded him as a person to be avoided. If he fled
+to the Babe for sympathy now, the Babe would be just as likely as not
+to suggest that he should come for a ten-mile spin with him, to get him
+into condition for the final Houser. The very thought of a ten-mile
+spin made Charteris feel faint. Lastly, there was Tony. But Tony's
+company was worse than none at all. He went about with his arm in a
+sling, and declined to be comforted. But for his injury, he would by
+now have been training hard for the Aldershot Boxing Competition, and
+the fact that he was now definitely out of it had a very depressing
+effect upon him. He lounged moodily about the gymnasium, watching
+Menzies, who was to take his place, sparring with the instructor, and
+refused consolation. Altogether, Charteris found life a distinct bore.
+
+He was reduced to such straits for amusement, that one Wednesday
+afternoon, finding himself with nothing else to do, he was working at a
+burlesque and remarkably scurrilous article on 'The Staff, by one who
+has suffered', which he was going to insert in _The Glow Worm_, an
+unofficial periodical which he had started for the amusement of the
+School and his own and his contributors' profit. He was just warming to
+his work, and beginning to enjoy himself, when the door opened without
+a preliminary knock. Charteris deftly slid a piece of blotting-paper
+over his MS., for Merevale occasionally entered a study in this manner.
+And though there was nothing about Merevale himself in the article, it
+would be better perhaps, thought Charteris, if he did not see it. But
+it was not Merevale. It was somebody far worse. The Babe.
+
+The Babe was clothed as to his body in football clothes, and as to
+face, in a look of holy enthusiasm. Charteris knew what that look
+meant. It meant that the Babe was going to try and drag him out for a
+run.
+
+'Go away, Babe,' he said, 'I'm busy.'
+
+'Why on earth are you slacking in here on this ripping afternoon?'
+
+'Slacking!' said Charteris. 'I like that. I'm doing berrain work, Babe.
+I'm writing an article on masters and their customs, which will cause a
+profound sensation in the Common Room. At least it would, if they ever
+saw it, but they won't. Or I hope they won't for their sake _and_
+mine. So run away, my precious Babe, and don't disturb your uncle when
+he's busy.'
+
+'Rot,' said the Babe firmly, 'you haven't taken any exercise for a
+week.'
+
+Charteris replied proudly that he had wound up his watch only last
+night. The Babe refused to accept the remark as relevant to the matter
+in hand.
+
+'Look here, Alderman,' he said, sitting down on the table, and gazing
+sternly at his victim, 'it's all very well, you know, but the final
+comes on in a few days, and you know you aren't in any too good
+training.'
+
+'I am,' said Charteris, 'I'm as fit as a prize fighter. Simply full of
+beans. Feel my ribs.'
+
+The Babe declined the offer.
+
+'No, but I say,' he said plaintively, 'I wish you'd treat it seriously.
+It's getting jolly serious, really. If Dacre's win that cup again this
+year, that'll make four years running.'
+
+'Not so,' said Charteris, like the mariner of
+infinite-resource-and-sagacity; 'not so, but far otherwise. It'll only
+make three.'
+
+'Well, three's bad enough.'
+
+'True, oh king, three is quite bad enough.'
+
+'Well, then, there you are. Now you see.'
+
+Charteris looked puzzled.
+
+'Would you mind explaining that remark?' he said. 'Slowly.'
+
+But the Babe had got off the table, and was prowling round the room,
+opening cupboards and boxes.
+
+'What are you playing at?' enquired Charteris.
+
+'Where do you keep your footer things?'
+
+'What do you want with my footer things, if you don't mind my asking?'
+
+'I'm going to help you put them on, and then you're coming for a run.'
+
+'Ah,' said Charteris.
+
+'Yes. Just a gentle spin to keep you in training. Hullo, this looks
+like them.'
+
+He plunged both hands into a box near the window and flung out a mass
+of football clothes. It reminded Charteris of a terrier digging at a
+rabbit-hole.
+
+He protested.
+
+'Don't, Babe. Treat 'em tenderly. You'll be spoiling the crease in
+those bags if you heave 'em about like that. I'm very particular about
+how I look on the football field. _I_ was always taught to dress
+myself like a little gentleman, so to speak. Well, now you've seen
+them, put 'em away.'
+
+'Put 'em on,' said the Babe firmly.
+
+'You are a beast, Babe. I don't want to go for a run. I'm getting too
+old for violent exercise.'
+
+'Buck up,' said the Babe. 'We mustn't chuck any chances away. Now that
+Tony can't play, we shall have to do all we know if we want to win.'
+
+'I don't see what need there is to get nervous about it. Considering
+we've got three of the First three-quarter line, and the Second Fifteen
+back, we ought to do pretty well.'
+
+'But look at Dacre's scrum. There's Prescott, to start with. He's worth
+any two of our men put together. Then they've got Carter, Smith, and
+Hemming out of the first, and Reeve-Jones out of the second. And their
+outsides aren't so very bad, if you come to think of it. Bannister's in
+the first, and the other three-quarters are all good. And they've got
+both the second halves. You'll have practically to look after both of
+them now that Tony's crocked. And Baddeley has come on a lot this
+term.'
+
+'Babe,' said Charteris, 'you have reason. I will turn over a new leaf.
+I _will_ be good. Give me my things and I'll come for a run. Only
+please don't let it be anything over twenty miles.'
+
+'Good man,' said the gratified Babe. 'We won't go far, and will take it
+quite easy.'
+
+'I tell you what,' said Charteris. 'Do you know a place called Worbury?
+I thought you wouldn't, probably. It's only a sort of hamlet, two
+cottages, three public-houses, and a duck-pond, and that sort of thing.
+I only know it because Welch and I ran there once last year. It's in
+the Badgwick direction, about three miles by road, mostly along the
+level. I vote we muffle up fairly well, blazers and sweaters and so on,
+run to Worbury, tea at one of the cottages, and back in time for
+lock-up. How does that strike you?'
+
+'It sounds all right. How about tea though? Are you certain you can get
+it?'
+
+'Rather. The Oldest Inhabitant is quite a pal of mine.'
+
+Charteris's circle of acquaintances was a standing wonder to the Babe
+and other Merevalians. He seemed to know everybody in the county.
+
+When once he was fairly started on any business, physical or mental,
+Charteris generally shaped well. It was the starting that he found the
+difficulty. Now that he was actually in motion, he was enjoying himself
+thoroughly. He wondered why on earth he had been so reluctant to come
+for this run. The knowledge that there were three miles to go, and that
+he was equal to them, made him feel a new man. He felt fit. And there
+is nothing like feeling fit for dispelling boredom. He swung along with
+the Babe at a steady pace.
+
+'There's the cottage,' he said, as they turned a bend of the road, and
+Worbury appeared a couple of hundred yards away. 'Let's sprint.' They
+sprinted, and arrived at the door of the cottage with scarcely a yard
+between them, much to the admiration of the Oldest Inhabitant, who was
+smoking a thoughtful pipe in his front garden. Mrs Oldest Inhabitant
+came out of the cottage at the sound of voices, and Charteris broached
+the subject of tea. The menu was sumptuous and varied, and even the
+Babe, in spite of his devotion to strict training, could scarce forbear
+to smile happily at the mention of hot cakes.
+
+During the _mauvais quart d'heure_ before the meal, Charteris kept
+up an animated conversation with the Oldest Inhabitant, the Babe
+joining in from time to time when he could think of anything to say.
+Charteris appeared to be quite a friend of the family. He enquired
+after the Oldest Inhabitant's rheumatics. It was gratifying to find
+that they were distinctly better. How had Mrs O. I. been since his last
+visit? Prarper hearty? Excellent. How was the O. I.'s nevvy?
+
+At the mention of his nevvy the O. I. became discursive. He told his
+audience everything that had happened in connection with the said nevvy
+for years back. After which he started to describe what he would
+probably do in the future. Amongst other things, there were going to be
+some sports at Rutton today week, and his nevvy was going to try and
+win the cup for what the Oldest Inhabitant vaguely described as 'a
+race'. He had won it last year. Yes, prarper good runner, his nevvy.
+Where was Rutton? the Babe wanted to know. About eight miles out of
+Stapleton, said Charteris, who was well up in local geography. You got
+there by train. It was the next station.
+
+Mrs O. I. came out to say that tea was ready, and, being drawn into the
+conversation on the subject of the Rutton sports, produced a programme
+of the same, which her nevvy had sent them. From this it seemed that
+the nevvy's 'spot' event was the egg and spoon race. An asterisk
+against his name pointed him out as the last year's winner.
+
+'Hullo,' said Charteris, 'I see there's a strangers' mile. I'm a demon
+at the mile when I'm roused. I think I shall go in for it.'
+
+He handed the programme back and began his tea.
+
+'You know, Babe,' he said, as they were going back that evening, 'I
+really think I shall go in for that race. It would be a most awful rag.
+It's the day before the House-match, so it'll just get me fit.'
+
+'Don't be a fool,' said the Babe. 'There would be a fearful row about
+it if you were found out. You'd get extras for the rest of your life.'
+
+'Well, the final Houser comes off on a Thursday, so it won't affect
+that.'
+
+'Yes, but still--'
+
+'I shall think about it,' said Charteris. 'You needn't go telling
+anyone.'
+
+'If you'll take my advice, you'll drop it.'
+
+'Your suggestion has been noted, and will receive due attention,' said
+Charteris. 'Put on the pace a bit.'
+
+They lengthened their stride, and conversation came to an abrupt end.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 4_
+
+'I shall go, Babe,' said Charteris on the following night.
+
+The Sixth Form had a slack day before them on the morrow, there being a
+temporary lull in the form-work which occurred about once a week, when
+there was no composition of any kind to be done. The Sixth did four
+compositions a week, two Greek and two Latin, and except for these did
+not bother themselves very much about overnight preparation. The Latin
+authors which the form were doing were Livy and Virgil, and when either
+of these were on the next day's programme, most of the Sixth considered
+that they were justified in taking a night off. They relied on their
+ability to translate both authors at sight and without previous
+acquaintance. The popular notion that Virgil is hard rarely appeals to
+a member of a public school. There are two ways of translating Virgil,
+the conscientious and the other. He prefers the other.
+
+On this particular night, therefore, work was 'off'. Merevale was over
+at the Great Hall, taking preparation, and the Sixth-Form Merevalians
+had assembled in Charteris's study to talk about things in general. It
+was after a pause of some moments, that had followed upon a lively
+discussion of the House's prospects in the forthcoming final, that
+Charteris had spoken.
+
+'I shall go, Babe,' said he.
+
+'Go where?' asked Tony, from the depths of a deck-chair.
+
+'Babe knows.'
+
+The Babe turned to the company and explained.
+
+'The lunatic's going in for the strangers' mile at some sports at
+Rutton next week. He'll get booked for a cert. He can't see that. I
+never saw such a man.'
+
+'Rally round,' said Charteris, 'and reason with me. I'll listen. Tony,
+what do you think about it?'
+
+Tony expressed his opinion tersely, and Charteris thanked him. Welch,
+who had been reading, now awoke to the fact that a discussion was in
+progress, and asked for details. The Babe explained once more, and
+Welch heartily corroborated Tony's remarks. Charteris thanked him too.
+
+'You aren't really going, are you?' asked Welch.
+
+'Rather,' said Charteris.
+
+'The Old Man won't give you leave.'
+
+'Shan't worry the poor man with such trifles.'
+
+'But it's miles out of bounds. Stapleton station is out of bounds to
+start with. It's against rules to go in a train, and Rutton's even more
+out of bounds than Stapleton.'
+
+'And as there are sports there,' said Tony, 'the Old Man is certain to
+put Rutton specially out of bounds for that day. He always bars a St
+Austin's chap going to a place when there's anything going on there.'
+
+'I don't care. What have I to do with the Old Man's petty prejudices?
+Now, let me get at my time-table. Here we are. Now then.'
+
+'Don't be a fool,' said Tony,
+
+'Certainly not. Look here, there's a train starts from Stapleton at
+three. I can catch that all right. Gets to Rutton at three-twenty.
+Sports begin at three-fifteen. At least, they are supposed to. Over
+before five, I should think. At least, my race will be, though I must
+stop to see the Oldest Inhabitant's nevvy win the egg and spoon canter.
+But that ought to come on before the strangers' race. Train back at a
+quarter past five. Arrives at a quarter to six. Lock up six-fifteen.
+That gives me half an hour to get here from Stapleton. What more do you
+want? I shall do it easily, and ... the odds against my being booked
+are about twenty-five to one. At which price if any gent present cares
+to deposit his money, I am willing to take him. Now I'll treat you to a
+tune, if you're good.'
+
+He went to the cupboard and produced his gramophone. Charteris's
+musical instruments had at one time been strictly suppressed by the
+authorities, and, in consequence, he had laid in a considerable stock
+of them. At last, when he discovered that there was no rule against the
+use of musical instruments in the House, Merevale had yielded. The
+stipulation that Charteris should play only before prep. was rigidly
+observed, except when Merevale was over at the Hall, and the Sixth had
+no work. On such occasions Charteris felt justified in breaking through
+the rule. He had a gramophone, a banjo, a penny whistle, and a mouth
+organ. The banjo, which he played really well, was the most in request,
+but the gramophone was also popular.
+
+'Turn on "Whistling Rufus",' observed Thomson.
+
+'Whistling Rufus' was duly turned on, giving way after an encore to
+'Bluebells'.
+
+'I always weep when I hear this,' said Tony.
+
+'It _is_ beautiful, isn't it?' said Charteris.
+
+    I'll be your sweetheart, if you--will be--mine,
+    All my life, I'll be your valentine.
+    Bluebells I've gathered--grrhhrh.
+
+The needle of the gramophone, after the manner of its kind, slipped
+raspingly over the surface of the wax, and the rest of the ballad was
+lost.
+
+'That,' said Charteris, 'is how I feel with regard to the Old Man. I'd
+be his sweetheart, if he'd be mine. But he makes no advances, and the
+stain on my scutcheon is not yet wiped out. I must say I haven't tried
+gathering bluebells for him yet, nor have I offered my services as a
+perpetual valentine, but I've been very kind to him in other ways.'
+
+'Is he still down on you?' asked the Babe.
+
+'He hasn't done much lately. We're in a state of truce at present. Did
+I tell you how I scored about Stapleton?'
+
+'You've only told us about a hundred times,' said the Babe brutally. 'I
+tell you what, though, he'll score off you if he finds you going to
+Rutton.'
+
+'Let's hope he won't.'
+
+'He won't,' said Welch suddenly.
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because you won't go. I'll bet you anything you like that you won't
+go.'
+
+That settled Charteris. It was the sort of remark that always acted on
+him like a tonic. He had been intending to go all the time, but it was
+this speech of Welch's that definitely clinched the matter. One of his
+mottoes for everyday use was 'Let not thyself be scored off by Welch.'
+
+'That's all right,' he said. 'Of course I shall go. What's the next
+item you'd like on this machine?'
+
+The day of the sports arrived, and the Babe, meeting Charteris at
+Merevale's gate, made a last attempt to head him off from his purpose.
+
+'How are you going to take your things?' he asked. 'You can't carry a
+bag. The first beak you met would ask questions.'
+
+If he had hoped that this would be a crushing argument, he was
+disappointed.
+
+Charteris patted a bloated coat pocket.
+
+'Bags,' he said laconically. 'Vest,' he added, doing the same to his
+other pocket. 'Shoes,' he concluded, 'you will observe I am carrying in
+a handy brown paper parcel, and if anybody wants to know what's in it,
+I shall tell them it's acid drops. Sure you won't come, too?'
+
+'Quite, thanks.'
+
+'All right. So long then. Be good while I'm gone.'
+
+And he passed on down the road that led to Stapleton.
+
+The Rutton Recreation Ground presented, as the _Stapleton Herald_
+justly remarked in its next week's issue, 'a gay and animated
+appearance'. There was a larger crowd than Charteris had expected. He
+made his way through them, resisting without difficulty the entreaties
+of a hoarse gentleman in a check suit to have three to two on 'Enery
+something for the hundred yards, and came at last to the dressing-tent.
+
+At this point it occurred to him that it would be judicious to find out
+when his race was to start. It was rather a chilly day, and the less
+time he spent in the undress uniform of shorts the better. He bought a
+correct card for twopence, and scanned it. The strangers' mile was down
+for four-fifty. There was no need to change for an hour yet. He wished
+the authorities could have managed to date the event earlier.
+
+Four-fifty was running it rather fine. The race would be over by about
+five to five, and it was a walk of some ten minutes to the station,
+less if he hurried. That would give him ten minutes for recovering from
+the effects of the race, and changing back into his ordinary clothes
+again. It would be quick work. But, having come so far, he was not
+inclined to go back without running in the race. He would never be able
+to hold his head up again if he did that. He left the dressing-tent,
+and started on a tour of the field.
+
+The scene was quite different from anything he had ever witnessed
+before in the way of sports. The sports at St Austin's were decorous to
+a degree. These leaned more to the rollickingly convivial. It was like
+an ordinary race-meeting, except that men were running instead of
+horses. Rutton was a quiet little place for the majority of the year,
+but it woke up on this day, and was evidently out to enjoy itself. The
+Rural Hooligan was a good deal in evidence, and though he was
+comparatively quiet just at present, the frequency with which he
+visited the various refreshment stalls that dotted the ground gave
+promise of livelier times in the future. Charteris felt that the
+afternoon would not be dull.
+
+The hour soon passed, and Charteris, having first seen the Oldest
+Inhabitant's nevvy romp home in the egg and spoon event, took himself
+off to the dressing-tent, and began to get into his running clothes.
+The bell for his race was just ringing when he left the tent. He
+trotted over to the starting place.
+
+Apparently there was not a very large 'field'. Two weedy-looking youths
+of about Charteris's age, dressed in blushing pink, put in an
+appearance, and a very tall, thin man came up almost immediately
+afterwards. Charteris had just removed his coat, and was about to get
+to his place on the line, when another competitor arrived, and, to
+judge by the applause that greeted his appearance, he was evidently a
+favourite in the locality. It was with shock that Charteris recognized
+his old acquaintance, the Bargees' secretary.
+
+He was clad in running clothes of a bright orange and a smile of
+conscious superiority, and when somebody in the crowd called out 'Go
+it, Jarge!' he accepted the tribute as his due, and waved a
+condescending hand in the speaker's direction.
+
+Some moments elapsed before he recognized Charteris, and the latter had
+time to decide upon his line of action. If he attempted concealment in
+any way, the man would recognize that on this occasion, at any rate, he
+had, to use an adequate if unclassical expression, got the bulge, and
+then there would be trouble. By brazening things out, however, there
+was just a chance that he might make him imagine that there was more in
+the matter than met the eye, and that, in some mysterious way, he had
+actually obtained leave to visit Rutton that day. After all, the man
+didn't know very much about School rules, and the recollection of the
+recent fiasco in which he had taken part would make him think twice
+about playing the amateur policeman again, especially in connection
+with Charteris.
+
+So he smiled genially, and expressed a hope that the man enjoyed robust
+health.
+
+The man replied by glaring in a simple and unaffected manner.
+
+'Looked up the Headmaster lately?' asked Charteris.
+
+'What are you doing here?'
+
+'I'm going to run. Hope you don't mind.'
+
+'You're out of bounds.'
+
+'That's what you said before. You'd better enquire a bit before you
+make rash statements. Otherwise, there's no knowing what may happen.
+Perhaps Mr Dacre has given me leave.'
+
+The man said something objurgatory under his breath, but forbore to
+continue the discussion. He was wondering, as Charteris had expected
+that he would, whether the latter had really got leave or not. It was a
+difficult problem.
+
+Whether such a result was due to his mental struggles, or whether it
+was simply to be attributed to his poor running, is open to question,
+but the fact remains that the secretary of the Old Crockfordians did
+not shine in the strangers' mile. He came in last but one, vanquishing
+the pink sportsman by a foot. Charteris, after a hot finish, was beaten
+on the tape by one of the weedy youths, who exhibited astounding
+sprinting powers in the last two hundred yards, overhauling Charteris,
+who had led all the time, in fine style, and scoring what the
+_Stapleton Herald_ described as a 'highly popular victory'.
+
+As soon as he had recovered his normal stock of wind--which was not
+immediately--it was borne in upon Charteris that if he wanted to catch
+the five-fifteen back to Stapleton, he had better be beginning to
+change. He went to the dressing-tent, and on examining his watch was
+horrified to find that he had just ten minutes in which to do
+everything, and the walk to the station, he reflected, was a long five
+minutes. He literally hurled himself into his clothes, and,
+disregarding the Bargee, who had entered the tent and seemed to wish to
+continue the discussion at the point where they had left off, shot off
+towards the gate nearest the station. He had exactly four minutes and
+twenty-five seconds in which to complete the journey, and he had just
+run a mile.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 5_
+
+Fortunately the road was mainly level. On the other hand, he was
+hampered by an overcoat. After the first hundred yards he took this
+off, and carried it in an unwieldy parcel. This, he found, answered
+admirably. Running became easier. He had worked the stiffness out of
+his legs by this time, and was going well. Three hundred yards from the
+station it was anybody's race. The exact position of the other
+competitor, the train, could not be defined. It was at any rate not yet
+within earshot, which meant that it still had at least a quarter of a
+mile to go. Charteris considered that he had earned a rest. He slowed
+down to a walk, but after proceeding at this pace for a few yards,
+thought that he heard a distant whistle, and dashed on again. Suddenly
+a raucous bellow of laughter greeted his ears from a spot in front of
+him, hidden from his sight by a bend in the road.
+
+'Somebody slightly tight,' thought Charteris, rapidly diagnosing the
+case. 'By Jove, if he comes rotting about with me I'll kill him.'
+Having to do anything in a desperate hurry always made Charteris's
+temper slightly villainous. He turned the corner at a sharp trot, and
+came upon two youths who seemed to be engaged in the harmless
+occupation of trying to ride a bicycle. They were of the type which he
+held in especial aversion, the Rural Hooligan type, and one at least of
+the two had evidently been present at a recent circulation of the
+festive bowl. He was wheeling the bicycle about the road in an aimless
+manner, and looked as if he wondered what was the matter with it that
+it would not stay in the same place for two consecutive seconds. The
+other youth was apparently of the 'Charles-his-friend' variety, content
+to look on and applaud, and generally to play chorus to his companion's
+'lead'. He was standing at the side of the road, smiling broadly in a
+way that argued feebleness of mind. Charteris was not quite sure which
+of the two types he loathed the more. He was inclined to call it a tie.
+
+However, there seemed to be nothing particularly lawless in what they
+were doing now. If they were content to let him pass without hindrance,
+he, for his part, was content generously to overlook the insult they
+offered him in daring to exist, and to maintain a state of truce. But,
+as he drew nearer, he saw that there was more in this business than the
+casual spectator might at first have supposed. A second and keener
+inspection of the reptiles revealed fresh phenomena. In the first
+place, the bicycle which Hooligan number one was playing with was a
+lady's bicycle, and a small one at that. Now, up to the age of fourteen
+and the weight of ten stone, a beginner at cycling often finds it more
+convenient to learn to ride on a lady's machine than on a gentleman's.
+The former offers greater facilities for rapid dismounting, a quality
+not to be despised in the earlier stages of initiation. But, though
+this is undoubtedly the case, and though Charteris knew that it was so,
+yet he felt instinctively that there was something wrong here.
+Hooligans of twenty years and twelve stone do not learn to ride on
+small ladies' machines, or, if they do, it is probably without the
+permission of the small lady who owns the same. Valuable as his time
+was, Charteris felt that it behoved him to spend a thoughtful minute or
+so examining into this affair. He slowed down once again to a walk,
+and, as he did so, his eye fell upon the character in the drama whose
+absence had puzzled him, the owner of the bicycle. And from that moment
+he felt that life would be a hollow mockery if he failed to fall upon
+those revellers and slay them. She stood by the hedge on the right, a
+forlorn little figure in grey, and she gazed sadly and helplessly at
+the manoeuvres that were going on in the middle of the road. Her age
+Charteris put down at a venture at twelve--a correct guess. Her state
+of mind he also conjectured. She was letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I
+would', like the late Macbeth, the cat i' the adage, and numerous other
+celebrities. She evidently had plenty of remarks to make on the subject
+in hand, but refrained from motives of prudence.
+
+Charteris had no such scruples. The feeling of fatigue that had been
+upon him had vanished, and his temper, which had been growing steadily
+worse for some twenty minutes, now boiled over gleefully at the
+prospect of something solid to work itself off upon. Even without a
+cause Charteris detested the Rural Hooligan. Now that a real,
+copper-bottomed motive for this dislike had been supplied to him, he
+felt himself capable of dealing with a whole regiment of the breed. The
+criminal with the bicycle had just let it fall with a crash to the
+ground when Charteris went for him low, in the style which the Babe
+always insisted on seeing in members of the First Fifteen on the
+football field, and hove him without comment into a damp ditch.
+'Charles his friend' uttered a shout of disapproval and rushed into the
+fray. Charteris gave him the straight left, of the type to which the
+great John Jackson is reported to have owed so much in the days of the
+old Prize Ring, and Charles, taking it between the eyes, stopped in a
+discouraged and discontented manner, and began to rub the place.
+Whereupon Charteris dashed in, and, to use an expression suitable to
+the deed, 'swung his right at the mark'. The 'mark', it may be
+explained for the benefit of the non-pugilistic, is that portion of the
+anatomy which lies hid behind the third button of the human waistcoat.
+It covers--in a most inadequate way--the wind, and even a gentle tap in
+the locality is apt to produce a fleeting sense of discomfort. A
+genuine flush hit on the spot, shrewdly administered by a muscular arm
+with the weight of the body behind it, causes the passive agent in the
+transaction to wish fervently, as far as he is at the moment physically
+capable of wishing anything, that he had never been born. 'Charles his
+friend' collapsed like an empty sack, and Charteris, getting a grip of
+the outlying portions of his costume, dragged him to the ditch and
+rolled him in on top of his friend, who had just recovered sufficiently
+to be thinking about getting out again. The pair of them lay there in a
+tangled heap. Charteris picked up the bicycle and gave it a cursory
+examination. The enamel was a good deal scratched, but no material
+damage had been done. He wheeled it across to its owner.
+
+'It isn't much hurt,' he said, as they walked on slowly together. 'Bit
+scratched, that's all.'
+
+'Thanks _awfully_,' said the small lady.
+
+'Oh, not at all,' replied Charteris. 'I enjoyed it.' (He felt he had
+said the right thing there. Your real hero always 'enjoys it'.) 'I'm
+sorry those bargees frightened you.'
+
+'They did rather. But'--she added triumphantly after a pause--'I didn't
+cry.'
+
+'Rather not,' said Charteris. 'You were awfully plucky. I noticed. But
+hadn't you better ride on? Which way were you going?'
+
+'I wanted to get to Stapleton.'
+
+'Oh. That's simple enough. You've merely got to go straight on down
+this road, as straight as ever you can go. But, look here, you know,
+you shouldn't be out alone like this. It isn't safe. Why did they let
+you?'
+
+The lady avoided his eye. She bent down and inspected the left pedal.
+
+'They shouldn't have sent you out alone,' said Charteris, 'why did
+they?'
+
+'They--they didn't. I came.'
+
+There was a world of meaning in the phrase. Charteris felt that he was
+in the same case. They had not let _him_. He had come. Here was a
+kindred spirit, another revolutionary soul, scorning the fetters of
+convention and the so-called authority of self-constituted rules, aha!
+Bureaucrats!
+
+'Shake hands,' he said, 'I'm in just the same way.'
+
+They shook hands gravely.
+
+'You know,' said the lady, 'I'm awfully sorry I did it now. It was very
+naughty.'
+
+'I'm not sorry yet,' said Charteris, 'I'm rather glad than otherwise.
+But I expect I shall be sorry before long.'
+
+'Will you be sent to bed?'
+
+'I don't think so.'
+
+'Will you have to learn beastly poetry?'
+
+'Probably not.'
+
+She looked at him curiously, as if to enquire, 'then if you won't have
+to learn poetry and you won't get sent to bed, what on earth is there
+for you to worry about?'
+
+She would probably have gone on to investigate the problem further, but
+at that moment there came the sound of a whistle. Then another, closer
+this time. Then a faint rumbling, which increased in volume steadily.
+Charteris looked back. The railway line ran by the side of the road. He
+could see the smoke of a train through the trees. It was quite close
+now, and coming closer every minute, and he was still quite a hundred
+and fifty yards from the station gates.
+
+'I say,' he cried. 'Great Scott, here comes my train. I must rush.
+Good-bye. You keep straight on.'
+
+His legs had had time to grow stiff again. For the first few strides
+running was painful. But his joints soon adapted themselves to the
+strain, and in ten seconds he was sprinting as fast as he had ever
+sprinted off the running-track. When he had travelled a quarter of the
+distance the small cyclist overtook him.
+
+'Be quick,' she said, 'it's just in sight.'
+
+Charteris quickened his stride, and, paced by the bicycle, spun along
+in fine style. Forty yards from the station the train passed him. He
+saw it roll into the station. There were still twenty yards to go,
+exclusive of the station's steps, and he was already running as fast as
+it lay in him to run. Now there were only ten. Now five. And at last,
+with a hurried farewell to his companion, he bounded up the steps and
+on to the platform. At the end of the platform the line took a sharp
+curve to the left. Round that curve the tail end of the guard's van was
+just disappearing.
+
+'Missed it, sir,' said the solitary porter, who managed things at
+Rutton, cheerfully. He spoke as if he was congratulating Charteris on
+having done something remarkably clever.
+
+'When's the next?' panted Charteris.
+
+'Eight-thirty,' was the porter's appalling reply.
+
+For a moment Charteris felt quite ill. No train till eight-thirty! Then
+was he indeed lost. But it couldn't be true. There must be some sort of
+a train between now and then.
+
+'Are you certain?' he said. 'Surely there's a train before that?'
+
+'Why, yes, sir,' said the porter gleefully, 'but they be all exprusses.
+Eight-thirty be the only 'un what starps at Rootton.'
+
+'Thanks,' said Charteris with marked gloom, 'I don't think that'll be
+much good to me. My aunt, what a hole I'm in.'
+
+ The porter made a sympathetic and interrogative noise at the back of
+his throat, as if inviting him to explain everything. But Charteris
+felt unequal to conversation. There are moments when one wants to be
+alone. He went down the steps again. When he got out into the road, his
+small cycling friend had vanished. Charteris was conscious of a feeling
+of envy towards her. She was doing the journey comfortably on a
+bicycle. He would have to walk it. Walk it! He didn't believe he could.
+The strangers' mile, followed by the Homeric combat with the two
+Hooligans and that ghastly sprint to wind up with, had left him
+decidedly unfit for further feats of pedestrianism. And it was eight
+miles to Stapleton, if it was a yard, and another mile from Stapleton
+to St Austin's. Charteris, having once more invoked the name of his
+aunt, pulled himself together with an effort, and limped gallantly on
+in the direction of Stapleton. But fate, so long hostile to him, at
+last relented. A rattle of wheels approached him from behind. A thrill
+of hope shot through him at the sound. There was the prospect of a
+lift. He stopped, and waited for the dog-cart--it sounded like a
+dog-cart--to arrive. Then he uttered a shout of rapture, and began to
+wave his arms like a semaphore. The man in the dog-cart was Dr Adamson.
+
+'Hullo, Charteris,' said the Doctor, pulling up his horse, 'what are
+you doing here?'
+
+'Give me a lift,' said Charteris, 'and I'll tell you. It's a long yarn.
+Can I get in?'
+
+'Come along. Plenty of room.'
+
+Charteris climbed up, and sank on to the cushioned seat with a sigh of
+pleasure. What glorious comfort. He had never enjoyed anything more in
+his life.
+
+'I'm nearly dead,' he said, as the dog-cart went on again. 'This is how
+it all happened. You see, it was this way--'
+
+And he embarked forthwith upon his narrative.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 6_
+
+By special request the Doctor dropped Charteris within a hundred yards
+of Merevale's door.
+
+'Good-night,' he said. 'I don't suppose you will value my advice at
+all, but you may have it for what it is worth. I recommend you stop
+this sort of game. Next time something will happen.'
+
+'By Jove, yes,' said Charteris, climbing painfully down from the
+dog-cart, 'I'll take that advice. I'm a reformed character from this
+day onwards. This sort of thing isn't good enough. Hullo, there's the
+bell for lock-up. Good-night, Doctor, and thanks most awfully for the
+lift. It was frightfully kind of you.'
+
+'Don't mention it,' said Dr Adamson, 'it is always a privilege to be in
+your company. When are you coming to tea with me again?'
+
+'Whenever you'll have me. I must get leave, though, this time.'
+
+'Yes. By the way, how's Graham? It is Graham, isn't it? The fellow who
+broke his collar-bone?'
+
+'Oh, he's getting on splendidly. Still in a sling, but it's almost well
+again now. But I must be off. Good-night.'
+
+'Good-night. Come to tea next Monday.'
+
+'Right,' said Charteris; 'thanks awfully.'
+
+He hobbled in at Merevale's gate, and went up to his study. The Babe
+was in there talking to Welch.
+
+'Hullo,' said the Babe, 'here's Charteris.'
+
+'What's left of him,' said Charteris.
+
+'How did it go off?'
+
+'Don't, please.'
+
+'Did you win?' asked Welch.
+
+'No. Second. By a yard. Oh, Lord, I am dead.'
+
+'Hot race?'
+
+'Rather. It wasn't that, though. I had to sprint all the way to the
+station, and missed my train by ten seconds at the end of it all.'
+
+'Then how did you get here?'
+
+'That was the one stroke of luck I've had this afternoon. I started to
+walk back, and after I'd gone about a quarter of a mile, Adamson caught
+me up in his dog-cart. I suggested that it would be a Christian act on
+his part to give me a lift, and he did. I shall remember Adamson in my
+will.'
+
+'Tell us what happened.'
+
+'I'll tell thee everything I can,' said Charteris. 'There's little to
+relate. I saw an aged, aged man a-sitting on a gate. Where do you want
+me to begin?'
+
+'At the beginning. Don't rot.'
+
+'I was born,' began Charteris, 'of poor but honest parents, who sent
+me to school at an early age in order that I might acquire a grasp of
+the Greek and Latin languages, now obsolete. I--'
+
+'How did you lose?' enquired the Babe.
+
+'The other man beat me. If he hadn't, I should have won hands down. Oh,
+I say, guess who I met at Rutton.'
+
+'Not a beak?'
+
+'No. Almost as bad, though. The Bargee man who paced me from Stapleton.
+Man who crocked Tony.'
+
+'Great _Scott_!' cried the Babe. 'Did he recognize you?'
+
+'Rather. We had a very pleasant conversation.'
+
+'If he reports you,' began the Babe.
+
+'Who's that?'
+
+Charteris looked up. Tony Graham had entered the study.
+
+'Hullo, Tony! Adamson told me to remember him to you.'
+
+'So you've got back?'
+
+Charteris confirmed the hasty guess.
+
+'But what are you talking about, Babe?' said Tony. 'Who's going to be
+reported, and who's going to report?'
+
+The Babe briefly explained the situation.
+
+'If the man,' he said, 'reports Charteris, he may get run in tomorrow,
+and then we shall have both our halves away against Dacre's. Charteris,
+you are a fool to go rotting about out of bounds like this.'
+
+'Nay, dry the starting tear,' said Charteris cheerfully. 'In the first
+place, I shouldn't get kept in on a Thursday anyhow. I should be shoved
+into extra on Saturday. Also, I shrewdly conveyed to the Bargee the
+impression that I was at Rutton by special permission.'
+
+'He's bound to know that that can't be true,' said Tony.
+
+'Well, I told him to think it over. You see, he got so badly left last
+time he tried to compass my downfall, that I shouldn't be a bit
+surprised if he let the job alone this journey.'
+
+'Let's hope so,' said the Babe gloomily.
+
+'That's right, Babby,' remarked Charteris encouragingly, nodding at the
+pessimist.
+
+'You buck up and keep looking on the bright side. It'll be all right.
+You see if it won't. If there's any running in to be done, I shall do
+it. I shall be frightfully fit tomorrow after all this dashing about
+today. I haven't an ounce of superfluous flesh on me. I'm a fine,
+strapping specimen of sturdy young English manhood. And I'm going to
+play a _very_ selfish game tomorrow, Babe.'
+
+'Oh, my dear chap, you mustn't.' The Babe's face wore an expression of
+horror. The success of the House-team in the final was very near to his
+heart. He could not understand anyone jesting on the subject. Charteris
+respected his anguish, and relieved it speedily.
+
+'I was only ragging,' he said. 'Considering that our three-quarter line
+is our one strong point, I'm not likely to keep the ball from it, if I
+get a chance of getting it out. Make your mind easy, Babe.'
+
+The final House-match was always a warmish game. The rivalry between
+the various Houses was great, and the football cup especially was
+fought for with immense keenness. Also, the match was the last fixture
+of the season, and there was a certain feeling in the teams that if
+they _did_ happen to disable a man or two, it would not matter
+much. The injured sportsman would not be needed for School-match
+purposes for another six months. As a result of which philosophical
+reflection, the tackling was ruled slightly energetic, and the
+handing-off was done with vigour.
+
+This year, to add a sort of finishing touch, there was just a little
+ill-feeling between Dacre's and Merevale's. The cause of it was the
+Babe. Until the beginning of the term he had been a day boy. Then the
+news began to circulate that he was going to become a boarder, either
+at Dacre's or at Merevale's. He chose the latter, and Dacre's felt
+slightly aggrieved. Some of the less sportsmanlike members of the House
+had proposed that a protest should be made against his being allowed to
+play, but, fortunately for the credit of Dacre's, Prescott, the captain
+of the House Fifteen, had put his foot down with an emphatic bang at
+the suggestion. As he sagely pointed out, there were some things which
+were bad form, and this was one of them. If the team wanted to express
+their disapproval, said he, let them do it on the field by tackling
+their very hardest. He personally was going to do his best, and he
+advised them to do the same.
+
+The rumour of this bad blood had got about the School in some
+mysterious manner, and when Swift, Merevale's only First Fifteen
+forward, kicked off up the hill, a large crowd was lining the ropes. It
+was evident from the outset that it would be a good game.
+
+Dacre's were the better side--as a team. They had no really weak spot.
+But Merevale's extraordinarily strong three-quarter line somewhat made
+up for an inferior scrum. And the fact that the Babe was in the centre
+was worth much.
+
+At first Dacre's pressed. Their pack was unusually heavy for a
+House-team, and they made full use of it. They took the ball down the
+field in short rushes till they were in Merevale's twenty-five. Then
+they began to heel, and, if things had been more or less exciting for
+the Merevalians before, they became doubly so now. The ground was dry,
+and so was the ball, and the game consequently waxed fast. Time after
+time the ball went along Dacre's three-quarter line, only to end by
+finding itself hurled, with the wing who was carrying it, into touch.
+Occasionally the centres, instead of feeding their wings, would try to
+dodge through themselves. And that was where the Babe came in. He was
+admittedly the best tackler in the School, but on this occasion he
+excelled himself. His man never had a chance of getting past. At last a
+lofty kick into touch over the heads of the spectators gave the players
+a few seconds' rest.
+
+The Babe went up to Charteris.
+
+'Look here,' he said, 'it's risky, but I think we'll try having the
+ball out a bit.'
+
+'In our own twenty-five?' said Charteris.
+
+'Wherever we are. I believe it will come off all right. Anyway, we'll
+try it. Tell the forwards.'
+
+For forwards playing against a pack much heavier than themselves, it is
+easier to talk about letting the ball out than to do it. The first half
+dozen times that Merevale's scrum tried to heel they were shoved off
+their feet, and it was on the enemy's side that the ball went out. But
+the seventh attempt succeeded. Out it came, cleanly and speedily.
+Daintree, who was playing instead of Tony, switched it across to
+Charteris. Charteris dodged the half who was marking him, and ran.
+Heeling and passing in one's own twenty-five is like smoking--an
+excellent practice if indulged in in moderation. On this occasion it
+answered perfectly. Charteris ran to the half-way line, and handed the
+ball on to the Babe. The Babe was tackled from behind, and passed to
+Thomson. Thomson dodged his man, and passed to Welch on the wing. Welch
+was the fastest sprinter in the School. It was a pleasure--if you did
+not happen to be one of the opposing side--to see him race down the
+touch-line. He was off like an arrow. Dacre's back made a futile
+attempt to get at him. Welch could have given the back fifteen yards in
+a hundred. He ran round him, and, amidst terrific applause from the
+Merevale's-supporting section of the audience, scored between the
+posts. The Babe took the kick and converted without difficulty. Five
+minutes afterwards the whistle blew for half-time.
+
+The remainder of the game does not call for detailed description.
+Dacre's pressed nearly the whole of the last half hour, but twice more
+the ball came out and went down Merevale's three-quarter line. Once it
+was the Babe who scored with a run from his own goal-line, and once
+Charteris, who got in from half-way, dodging through the whole team.
+The last ten minutes of the game was marked by a slight excess of
+energy on both sides. Dacre's forwards were in a decidedly bad temper,
+and fought like tigers to break through, and Merevale's played up to
+them with spirit. The Babe seemed continually to be precipitating
+himself at the feet of rushing forwards, and Charteris felt as if at
+least a dozen bones were broken in various portions of his anatomy. The
+game ended on Merevale's line, but they had won the match and the cup
+by two goals and a try to nothing.
+
+Charteris limped off the field, cheerful but damaged. He ached all
+over, and there was a large bruise on his left cheek-bone. He and Babe
+were going to the House, when they were aware that the Headmaster was
+beckoning to them.
+
+'Well, MacArthur, and what was the result of the match?'
+
+'We won, sir,' boomed the Babe. 'Two goals and a try to _nil_.'
+
+'You have hurt your cheek, Charteris?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'How did you do that?'
+
+'I got a kick, sir, in one of the rushes.'
+
+'Ah. I should bathe it, Charteris. Bathe it well. I hope it will not be
+very painful. Bathe it well in warm water.'
+
+He walked on.
+
+'You know,' said Charteris to the Babe, as they went into the House,
+'the Old Man isn't such a bad sort after all. He has his points, don't
+you think?'
+
+The Babe said that he did.
+
+'I'm going to reform, you know,' continued Charteris confidentially.
+
+'It's about time,' said the Babe. 'You can have the bath first if you
+like. Only buck up.'
+
+Charteris boiled himself for ten minutes, and then dragged his weary
+limbs to his study. It was while he was sitting in a deck-chair eating
+mixed biscuits, and wondering if he would ever be able to summon up
+sufficient energy to put on garments of civilization, that somebody
+knocked at the door.
+
+'Yes,' shouted Charteris. 'What is it? Don't come in. I'm changing.'
+
+The melodious treble of Master Crowinshaw, his fag, made itself heard
+through the keyhole.
+
+'The Head told me to tell you that he wanted to see you at the School
+House as soon as you can go.'
+
+'All right,' shouted Charteris. 'Thanks.'
+
+'Now what,' he continued to himself, 'does the Old Man want to see me
+for? Perhaps he wants to make certain that I've bathed my cheek in warm
+water. Anyhow, I suppose I must go.'
+
+A quarter of an hour later he presented himself at the Headmagisterial
+door. The sedate Parker, the Head's butler, who always filled Charteris
+with a desire to dig him hard in the ribs just to see what would
+happen, ushered him into the study.
+
+The Headmaster was reading by the light of a lamp when Charteris came
+in. He laid down his book, and motioned him to a seat; after which
+there was an awkward pause.
+
+'I have just received,' began the Head at last, 'a most unpleasant
+communication. Most unpleasant. From whom it comes I do not know. It
+is, in fact--er--anonymous. I am sorry that I ever read it.'
+
+He stopped. Charteris made no comment. He guessed what was coming. He,
+too, was sorry that the Head had ever read the letter.
+
+'The writer says that he saw you, that he actually spoke to you, at the
+athletic sports at Rutton yesterday. I have called you in to tell me if
+that is true.' The Head fastened an accusing eye on his companion.
+
+'It is quite true, sir,' said Charteris steadily.
+
+'What!' said the Head sharply. 'You were at Rutton?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'You were perfectly aware, I suppose, that you were breaking the School
+rules by going there, Charteris?' enquired the Head in a cold voice.
+
+'Yes, sir.' There was another pause.
+
+'This is very serious,' began the Head. 'I cannot overlook this. I--'
+
+There was a slight scuffle of feet in the passage outside. The door
+flew open vigorously, and a young lady entered. It was, as Charteris
+recognized in a minute, his acquaintance of the afternoon, the young
+lady of the bicycle.
+
+'Uncle,' she said, 'have you seen my book anywhere?'
+
+'Hullo!' she broke off as her eye fell on Charteris.
+
+'Hullo!' said Charteris, affably, not to be outdone in the courtesies.
+
+'Did you catch your train?'
+
+'No. Missed it.'
+
+'Hullo! what's the matter with your cheek?'
+
+'I got a kick on it.'
+
+'Oh, does it hurt?'
+
+'Not much, thanks.'
+
+Here the Head, feeling perhaps a little out of it, put in his oar.
+
+'Dorothy, you must not come here now. I am busy. And how, may I ask, do
+you and Charteris come to be acquainted?'
+
+'Why, he's him,' said Dorothy lucidly.
+
+The Head looked puzzled.
+
+'Him. The chap, you know.'
+
+It is greatly to the Head's credit that he grasped the meaning of these
+words. Long study of the classics had quickened his faculty for seeing
+sense in passages where there was none. The situation dawned upon him.
+
+'Do you mean to tell me, Dorothy, that it was Charteris who came to
+your assistance yesterday?'
+
+Dorothy nodded energetically.
+
+'He gave the men beans,' she said. 'He did, really,' she went on,
+regardless of the Head's look of horror. 'He used right and left with
+considerable effect.'
+
+Dorothy's brother, a keen follower of the Ring, had been good enough
+some days before to read her out an extract from an account in _The
+Sportsman_ of a match at the National Sporting Club, and the account
+had been much to her liking. She regarded it as a masterpiece of
+English composition.
+
+'Dorothy,' said the Headmaster, 'run away to bed.' A suggestion which
+she treated with scorn, it wanting a clear two hours to her legal
+bedtime. 'I must speak to your mother about your deplorable habit of
+using slang. Dear me, I must certainly speak to her.'
+
+And, shamefully unabashed, Dorothy retired.
+
+The Head was silent for a few minutes after she had gone; then he
+turned to Charteris again.
+
+'In consideration of this, Charteris, I shall--er--mitigate slightly
+the punishment I had intended to give you.'
+
+Charteris murmured his gratification.
+
+'But,' continued the Head sternly, 'I cannot overlook the offence. I
+have my duty to consider. You will therefore write me--er--ten lines of
+Virgil by tomorrow evening, Charteris.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Latin _and_ English,' said the relentless pedagogue.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And, Charteris--I am speaking now--er--unofficially, not as a
+headmaster, you understand--if in future you would cease to break
+School rules simply as a matter of principle, for that, I fancy, is what
+it amounts to, I--er--well, I think we should get on better together.
+And that is, on my part at least, a consummation--er--devoutly to be
+wished. Good-night, Charteris.'
+
+'Good-night, sir.'
+
+The Head extended a large hand. Charteris took it, and his departure.
+
+The Headmaster opened his book again, and turned over a new leaf.
+Charteris at the same moment, walking slowly in the direction of
+Merevale's, was resolving for the future to do the very same thing. And
+he did.
+
+
+
+
+[9]
+
+HOW PAYNE BUCKED UP
+
+
+It was Walkinshaw's affair from the first. Grey, the captain of the St
+Austin's Fifteen, was in the infirmary nursing a bad knee. To him came
+Charles Augustus Walkinshaw with a scheme. Walkinshaw was football
+secretary, and in Grey's absence acted as captain. Besides these two
+there were only a couple of last year's team left--Reade and Barrett,
+both of Philpott's House.
+
+'Hullo, Grey, how's the knee?' said Walkinshaw.
+
+'How's the team getting on?' he said.
+
+'Well, as far as I can see,' said Walkinshaw, 'we ought to have a
+rather good season, if you'd only hurry up and come back. We beat a
+jolly hot lot of All Comers yesterday. Smith was playing for them. The
+Blue, you know. And lots of others. We got a goal and a try to
+_nil_.'
+
+'Good,' said Grey. 'Who did anything for us? Who scored?'
+
+'I got in once. Payne got the other.'
+
+'By Jove, did he? What sort of a game is he playing this year?'
+
+The moment had come for Walkinshaw to unburden himself to his scheme.
+He proceeded to do so.
+
+'Not up to much,' he said. 'Look here, Grey, I've got rather an idea.
+It's my opinion Payne's not bucking up nearly as much as he might. Do
+you mind if I leave him out of the next game?'
+
+Grey stared. The idea was revolutionary.
+
+'What! Leave him out? My good man, he'll be the next chap to get his
+colours. He's a cert. for his cap.'
+
+'That's just it. He knows he's a cert., and he's slacking on the
+strength of it. Now, my idea is that if you slung him out for a match
+or two, he'd buck up extra hard when he came into the team again. Can't
+I have a shot at it?'
+
+Grey weighed the matter. Walkinshaw pressed home his arguments.
+
+'You see, it isn't like cricket. At cricket, of course, it might put a
+chap off awfully to be left out, but I don't see how it can hurt a
+man's play at footer. Besides, he's beginning to stick on side
+already.'
+
+'Is he, by Jove?' said Grey. This was the unpardonable sin. 'Well, I'll
+tell you what you can do if you like. Get up a scratch game, First
+Fifteen _v._ Second, and make him captain of the Second.'
+
+'Right,' said Walkinshaw, and retired beaming.
+
+Walkinshaw, it may be remarked at once, to prevent mistakes, was a
+well-meaning idiot. There was no doubt about his being well-meaning.
+Also, there was no doubt about his being an idiot. He was continually
+getting insane ideas into his head, and being unable to get them out
+again. This matter of Payne was a good example of his customary
+methods. He had put his hand on the one really first-class forward St
+Austin's possessed, and proposed to remove him from the team. And yet
+through it all he was perfectly well-meaning. The fact that personally
+he rather disliked Payne had, to do him justice, no weight at all with
+him. He would have done the same by his bosom friend under like
+circumstances. This is the only excuse that can be offered for him. It
+was true that Payne regarded himself as a certainty for his colours, as
+far as anything can be considered certain in this vale of sorrow. But
+to accuse him of trading on this, and, to use the vernacular, of
+putting on side, was unjust to a degree.
+
+On the afternoon following this conversation Payne, who was a member of
+Dacre's House, came into his study and banged his books down on the
+table with much emphasis. This was a sign that he was feeling
+dissatisfied with the way in which affairs were conducted in the world.
+Bowden, who was asleep in an armchair--he had been staying in with a
+cold--woke with a start. Bowden shared Payne's study. He played centre
+three-quarter for the Second Fifteen.
+
+'Hullo!' he said.
+
+Payne grunted. Bowden realized that matters had not been going well
+with him. He attempted to soothe him with conversation, choosing what
+he thought would be a congenial topic.
+
+'What's on on Saturday?' he asked.
+
+'Scratch game. First _v._ Second.'
+
+Bowden groaned.
+
+'I know those First _v._ Second games,' he said. 'They turn the
+Second out to get butchered for thirty-five minutes each way, to
+improve the First's combination. It may be fun for the First, but it's
+not nearly so rollicking for us. Look here, Payne, if you find me with
+the pill at any time, you can let me down easy, you know. You needn't
+go bringing off any of your beastly gallery tackles.'
+
+'I won't,' said Payne. 'To start with, it would be against rules. We
+happen to be on the same side.'
+
+'Rot, man; I'm not playing for the First.' This was the only
+explanation that occurred to him.
+
+'I'm playing for the Second.'
+
+'What! Are you certain?'
+
+'I've seen the list. They're playing Babington instead of me.'
+
+'But why? Babington's no good.'
+
+'I think they have a sort of idea I'm slacking or something. At any
+rate, Walkinshaw told me that if I bucked up I might get tried again.'
+
+'Silly goat,' said Bowden. 'What are you going to do?'
+
+'I'm going to take his advice, and buck up.'
+
+II
+
+He did. At the beginning of the game the ropes were lined by some
+thirty spectators, who had come to derive a languid enjoyment from
+seeing the First pile up a record score. By half-time their numbers had
+risen to an excited mob of something over three hundred, and the second
+half of the game was fought out to the accompaniment of a storm of
+yells and counter yells such as usually only belonged to
+school-matches. The Second Fifteen, after a poor start, suddenly awoke
+to the fact that this was not going to be the conventional massacre by
+any means. The First had scored an unconverted try five minutes after
+the kick-off, and it was after this that the Second began to get
+together. The school back bungled the drop out badly, and had to find
+touch in his own twenty-five, and after that it was anyone's game. The
+scrums were a treat to behold. Payne was a monument of strength. Time
+after time the Second had the ball out to their three-quarters, and
+just after half-time Bowden slipped through in the corner. The kick
+failed, and the two teams, with their scores equal now, settled down
+grimly to fight the thing out to a finish. But though they remained on
+their opponents' line for most of the rest of the game, the Second did
+not add to their score, and the match ended in a draw of three points
+all.
+
+The first intimation Grey received of this came to him late in the
+evening. He had been reading a novel which, whatever its other merits
+may have been, was not interesting, and it had sent him to sleep. He
+awoke to hear a well-known voice observe with some unction: 'Ah! M'yes.
+Leeches and hot fomentations.' This effectually banished sleep. If
+there were two things in the world that he loathed, they were leeches
+and hot fomentations, and the School doctor apparently regarded them as
+a panacea for every kind of bodily ailment, from a fractured skull to a
+cold in the head. It was this gentleman who had just spoken, but Grey's
+alarm vanished as he perceived that the words had no personal
+application to himself. The object of the remark was a fellow-sufferer
+in the next bed but one. Now Grey was certain that when he had fallen
+asleep there had been nobody in that bed. When, therefore, the medical
+expert had departed on his fell errand, the quest of leeches and hot
+fomentations, he sat up and gave tongue.
+
+'Who's that in that bed?' he asked.
+
+'Hullo, Grey,' replied a voice. 'Didn't know you were awake. I've come
+to keep you company.'
+
+'That you, Barrett? What's up with you?'
+
+'Collar-bone. Dislocated it or something. Reade's over in that corner.
+He has bust his ankle. Oh, yes, we've been having a nice, cheery
+afternoon,' concluded Barrett bitterly.
+
+'Great Scott! How did it happen?'
+
+'Payne.'
+
+'Where? In your collar-bone?'
+
+'Yes. That wasn't what I meant, though. What I was explaining was that
+Payne got hold of me in the middle of the field, and threw me into
+touch. After which he fell on me. That was enough for my simple needs.
+I'm not grasping.'
+
+'How about Reade?'
+
+'The entire Second scrum collapsed on top of Reade. When we dug him out
+his ankle was crocked. Mainspring gone, probably. Then they gathered up
+the pieces and took them gently away. I don't know how it all ended.'
+
+Just then Walkinshaw burst into the room. He had a large bruise over
+one eye, his arm was in a sling, and he limped. But he was in excellent
+spirits.
+
+'I knew I was right, by Jove,' he observed to Grey. 'I knew he could
+buck up if he liked.'
+
+'I know it now,' said Barrett.
+
+'Who's this you're talking about?' said Grey.
+
+'Payne. I've never seen anything like the game he played today. He was
+everywhere. And, by Jove, his _tackling_!'
+
+'Don't,' said Barrett, wearily.
+
+'It's the best match I ever played in,' said Walkinshaw, bubbling over
+with enthusiasm. 'Do you know, the Second had all the best of the
+game.'
+
+'What was the score?'
+
+'Draw. One try all.'
+
+'And now I suppose you're satisfied?' enquired Barrett. The great
+scheme for the regeneration of Payne had been confided to him by its
+proud patentee.
+
+'Almost,' said Walkinshaw. 'We'll continue the treatment for one more
+game, and then we'll have him simply fizzing for the Windybury match.
+That's next Saturday. By the way, I'm afraid you'll hardly be fit again
+in time for that, Barrett, will you?'
+
+'I may possibly,' said Barrett, coldly, 'be getting about again in time
+for the Windybury match of the year after next. This year I'm afraid I
+shall not have the pleasure. And I should strongly advise you, if you
+don't want to have to put a team of cripples into the field, to
+discontinue the treatment, as you call it.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' said Walkinshaw.
+
+On the following Wednesday evening, at five o'clock, something was
+carried in on a stretcher, and deposited in the bed which lay between
+Grey and Barrett. Close scrutiny revealed the fact that it was what had
+once been Charles Augustus Walkinshaw. He was slightly broken up.
+
+'Payne?' enquired Grey in chilly tones.
+
+Walkinshaw admitted the impeachment.
+
+Grey took a pencil and a piece of paper from the table at his side. 'If
+you want to know what I'm doing,' he said, 'I'm writing out the team
+for the Windybury match, and I'm going to make Payne captain, as the
+senior Second Fifteen man. And if we win I'm jolly well going to give
+him his cap after the match. If we don't win, it'll be the fault of a
+raving lunatic of the name of Walkinshaw, with his beastly Colney Hatch
+schemes for reforming slack forwards. You utter rotter!'
+
+Fortunately for the future peace of mind of C. A. Walkinshaw, the
+latter contingency did not occur. The School, in spite of its
+absentees, contrived to pull the match off by a try to _nil_.
+Payne, as was only right and proper, scored the try, making his way
+through the ranks of the visiting team with the quiet persistence of a
+steam-roller. After the game he came to tea, by request, at the
+infirmary, and was straightaway invested by Grey with his First Fifteen
+colours. On his arrival he surveyed the invalids with interest.
+
+'Rough game, footer,' he observed at length.
+
+'Don't mention it,' said Barrett politely. 'Leeches,' he added
+dreamily. 'Leeches and hot fomentations. _Boiling_ fomentations.
+Will somebody kindly murder Walkinshaw!'
+
+'Why?' asked Payne, innocently.
+
+
+
+
+[10]
+
+AUTHOR!
+
+
+J. S. M. Babington, of Dacre's House, was on the horns of a dilemma.
+Circumstances over which he had had no control had brought him, like
+another Hercules, to the cross-roads, and had put before him the choice
+between pleasure and duty, or, rather, between pleasure and what those
+in authority called duty. Being human, he would have had little
+difficulty in making his decision, had not the path of pleasure been so
+hedged about by danger as to make him doubt whether after all the thing
+could be carried through.
+
+The facts in the case were these. It was the custom of the mathematical
+set to which J. S. M. Babington belonged, 4B to wit, to relieve the
+tedium of the daily lesson with a species of round game which was
+played as follows. As soon as the master had taken his seat, one of the
+players would execute a manoeuvre calculated to draw attention on
+himself, such as dropping a book or upsetting the blackboard. Called up
+to the desk to give explanation, he would embark on an eloquent speech
+for the defence. This was the cue for the next player to begin. His
+part consisted in making his way to the desk and testifying to the
+moral excellence of his companion, and giving in full the reasons why
+he should be discharged without a stain upon his character. As soon as
+he had warmed to his work he would be followed by a third player, and
+so on until the standing room around the desk was completely filled
+with a great cloud of witnesses. The duration of the game varied, of
+course, considerably. On some occasions it could be played through with
+such success, that the master would enter into the spirit of the thing,
+and do his best to book the names of all offenders at one and the same
+time, a feat of no inconsiderable difficulty. At other times matters
+would come to a head more rapidly. In any case, much innocent fun was
+to be derived from it, and its popularity was great. On the day,
+however, on which this story opens, a new master had been temporarily
+loosed into the room in place of the Rev. Septimus Brown, who had been
+there as long as the oldest inhabitant could remember. The Rev.
+Septimus was a wrangler, but knew nothing of the ways of the human boy.
+His successor, Mr Reginald Seymour, was a poor mathematician, but a
+good master. He had been, moreover, a Cambridge Rugger Blue. This fact
+alone should have ensured him against the customary pleasantries, for a
+Blue is a man to be respected. It was not only injudicious, therefore,
+but positively wrong of Babington to plunge against the blackboard on
+his way to his place. If he had been a student of Tennyson, he might
+have remembered that the old order is in the habit of changing and
+yielding place to the new.
+
+Mr Seymour looked thoughtfully for a moment
+at the blackboard.
+
+'That was rather a crude effort,' he said pleasantly to Babington, 'you
+lack _finesse_. Pick it up again, please.'
+
+Babington picked it up without protest. Under the rule of the Rev.
+Septimus this would have been the signal for the rest of the class to
+leave their places and assist him, but now they seemed to realize that
+there was a time for everything, and that this was decidedly no time
+for indoor games.
+
+'Thank you,' said Mr Seymour, when the board was in its place again.
+'What is your name? Eh, what? I didn't quite hear.'
+
+'Babington, sir.'
+
+'Ah. You had better come in tomorrow at two and work out examples three
+hundred to three-twenty in "Hall and Knight". There is really plenty of
+room to walk in between that desk and the blackboard. It only wants
+practice.'
+
+What was left of Babington then went to his seat. He felt that his
+reputation as an artistic player of the game had received a shattering
+blow. Then there was the imposition. This in itself would have troubled
+him little. To be kept in on a half-holiday is annoying, but it is one
+of those ills which the flesh is heir to, and your true philosopher can
+always take his gruel like a man.
+
+But it so happened that by the evening post he had received a letter
+from a cousin of his, who was a student at Guy's, and from all accounts
+was building up a great reputation in the medical world. From this
+letter it appeared that by a complicated process of knowing people who
+knew other people who had influence with the management, he had
+contrived to obtain two tickets for a morning performance of the new
+piece that had just been produced at one of the theatres. And if Mr J.
+S. M. Babington wished to avail himself of the opportunity, would he
+write by return, and be at Charing Cross Underground bookstall at
+twenty past two.
+
+Now Babington, though he objected strongly to the drama of ancient
+Greece, was very fond of that of the present day, and he registered a
+vow that if the matter could possibly be carried through, it should be.
+His choice was obvious. He could cut his engagement with Mr Seymour, or
+he could keep it. The difficulty lay rather in deciding upon one or
+other of the alternatives. The whole thing turned upon the extent of
+the penalty in the event of detection.
+
+That was his dilemma. He sought advice.
+
+'I should risk it,' said his bosom friend Peterson.
+
+'I shouldn't advise you to,' remarked Jenkins.
+
+Jenkins was equally a bosom friend, and in the matter of wisdom in no
+way inferior to Peterson.
+
+'What would happen, do you think?' asked Babington.
+
+'Sack,' said one authority.
+
+'Jaw, and double impot,' said another.
+
+'The _Daily Telegraph_,' muttered the tempter in a stage aside,
+'calls it the best comedy since Sheridan.'
+
+'So it does,' thought Babington. 'I'll risk it.'
+
+'You'll be a fool if you do,' croaked the gloomy Jenkins. 'You're bound
+to be caught.' But the Ayes had it. Babington wrote off that night
+accepting the invitation.
+
+It was with feelings of distinct relief that he heard Mr Seymour
+express to another master his intention of catching the twelve-fifteen
+train up to town. It meant that he would not be on the scene to see him
+start on the 'Hall and Knight'. Unless luck were very much against him,
+Babington might reasonably hope that he would accept the imposition
+without any questions. He had taken the precaution to get the examples
+finished overnight, with the help of Peterson and Jenkins, aided by a
+weird being who actually appeared to like algebra, and turned out ten
+of the twenty problems in an incredibly short time in exchange for a
+couple of works of fiction (down) and a tea (at a date). He himself
+meant to catch the one-thirty, which would bring him to town in good
+time. Peterson had promised to answer his name at roll-call, a delicate
+operation, in which long practice had made him, like many others of the
+junior members of the House, no mean proficient.
+
+It would be pleasant for a conscientious historian to be able to say
+that the one-thirty broke down just outside Victoria, and that
+Babington arrived at the theatre at the precise moment when the curtain
+fell and the gratified audience began to stream out. But truth, though
+it crush me. The one-thirty was so punctual that one might have thought
+that it belonged to a line other than the line to which it did belong.
+From Victoria to Charing Cross is a journey that occupies no
+considerable time, and Babington found himself at his destination with
+five minutes to wait. At twenty past his cousin arrived, and they made
+their way to the theatre. A brief skirmish with a liveried menial in
+the lobby, and they were in their seats.
+
+Some philosopher, of extraordinary powers of intuition, once informed
+the world that the best of things come at last to an end. The statement
+was tested, and is now universally accepted as correct. To apply the
+general to the particular, the play came to an end amidst uproarious
+applause, to which Babington contributed an unstinted quotum, about
+three hours after it had begun.
+
+'What do you say to going and grubbing somewhere?' asked Babington's
+cousin, as they made their way out.
+
+'Hullo, there's that man Richards,' he continued, before Babington
+could reply that of all possible actions he considered that of going
+and grubbing somewhere the most desirable. 'Fellow I know at Guy's, you
+know,' he added, in explanation. 'I'll get him to join us. You'll like
+him, I expect.'
+
+Richards professed himself delighted, and shook hands with Babington
+with a fervour which seemed to imply that until he had met him life had
+been a dreary blank, but that now he could begin to enjoy himself
+again. 'I should like to join you, if you don't mind including a friend
+of mine in the party,' said Richards. 'He was to meet me here. By the
+way, he's the author of that new piece--_The Way of the World.'_
+
+'Why, we've just been there.'
+
+'Oh, then you will probably like to meet him. Here he is.'
+
+As he spoke a man came towards them, and, with a shock that sent all
+the blood in his body to the very summit of his head, and then to the
+very extremities of his boots, Babington recognized Mr Seymour. The
+assurance of the programme that the play was by Walter Walsh was a
+fraud. Nay worse, a downright and culpable lie. He started with the
+vague idea of making a rush for safety, but before his paralysed limbs
+could be induced to work, Mr Seymour had arrived, and he was being
+introduced (oh, the tragic irony of it) to the man for whose benefit he
+was at that very moment supposed to be working out examples three
+hundred to three-twenty in 'Hall and Knight'.
+
+Mr Seymour shook hands, without appearing to recognize him. Babington's
+blood began to resume its normal position again, though he felt that
+this seeming ignorance of his identity might be a mere veneer, a wile
+of guile, as the bard puts it. He remembered, with a pang, a story in
+some magazine where a prisoner was subjected to what the light-hearted
+inquisitors called the torture of hope. He was allowed to escape from
+prison, and pass guards and sentries apparently without their noticing
+him. Then, just as he stepped into the open air, the chief inquisitor
+tapped him gently on the shoulder, and, more in sorrow than in anger,
+reminded him that it was customary for condemned men to remain
+_inside_ their cells. Surely this was a similar case. But then the
+thought came to him that Mr Seymour had only seen him once, and so
+might possibly have failed to remember him, for there was nothing
+special about Babington's features that arrested the eye, and stamped
+them on the brain for all time. He was rather ordinary than otherwise
+to look at. At tea, as bad luck would have it, the two sat opposite one
+another, and Babington trembled. Then the worst happened. Mr Seymour,
+who had been looking attentively at him for some time, leaned forward
+and said in a tone evidently devoid of suspicion: 'Haven't we met
+before somewhere? I seem to remember your face.'
+
+'Er--no, no,' replied Babington. 'That is, I think not. We may have.'
+
+'I feel sure we have. What school are you at?'
+
+Babington's soul began to writhe convulsively.
+
+'What, what school? Oh, what _school_? Why, er--I'm
+at--er--Uppingham.'
+
+Mr Seymour's face assumed a pleased expression.
+
+'Uppingham? Really. Why, I know several Uppingham fellows. Do you know
+Mr Morton? He's a master at Uppingham, and a great friend of mine.'
+
+The room began to dance briskly before Babington's eyes, but he
+clutched at a straw, or what he thought was a straw.
+
+'Uppingham? Did I say Uppingham? Of course, I mean Rugby, you know,
+Rugby. One's always mixing the two up, you know. Isn't one?'
+
+Mr Seymour looked at him in amazement. Then he looked at the others as
+if to ask which of the two was going mad, he or the youth opposite him.
+Babington's cousin listened to the wild fictions which issued from his
+lips in equal amazement. He thought he must be ill. Even Richards had a
+fleeting impression that it was a little odd that a fellow should
+forget what school he was at, and mistake the name Rugby for that of
+Uppingham, or _vice versa_. Babington became an object of
+interest.
+
+'I say, Jack,' said the cousin, 'you're feeling all right, aren't you?
+I mean, you don't seem to know what you're talking about. If you're
+going to be ill, say so, and I'll prescribe for you.'
+
+'Is he at Rugby?' asked Mr Seymour.
+
+'No, of course he's not. How could he have got from Rugby to London in
+time for a morning performance? Why, he's at St Austin's.'
+
+Mr Seymour sat for a moment in silence, taking this in. Then he
+chuckled. 'It's all right,' he said, 'he's not ill. We have met before,
+but under such painful circumstances that Master Babington very
+thoughtfully dissembled, in order not to remind me of them.'
+
+He gave a brief synopsis of what had occurred. The audience, exclusive
+of Babington, roared with laughter.
+
+'I suppose,' said the cousin, 'you won't prosecute, will you? It's
+really such shocking luck, you know, that you ought to forget you're a
+master.'
+
+Mr Seymour stirred his tea and added another lump of sugar very
+carefully before replying. Babington watched him in silence, and wished
+that he would settle the matter quickly, one way or the other.
+
+'Fortunately for Babington,' said Mr Seymour, 'and unfortunately for
+the cause of morality, I am not a master. I was only a stop-gap, and my
+term of office ceased today at one o'clock. Thus the prisoner at the
+bar gets off on a technical point of law, and I trust it will be a
+lesson to him. I suppose you had the sense to do the imposition?'
+
+'Yes, sir, I sat up last night.'
+
+'Good. Now, if you'll take my advice, you'll reform, or another
+day you'll come to a bad end. By the way, how did you manage about
+roll-call today?'
+
+'I thought that was an awfully good part just at the end of the first
+act,' said Babington.
+
+Mr Seymour smiled. Possibly from gratification.
+
+'Well, how did it go off?' asked Peterson that night.
+
+'Don't, old chap,' said Babington, faintly.
+
+'I told you so,' said Jenkins at a venture.
+
+But when he had heard the whole story he withdrew the remark, and
+commented on the wholly undeserved good luck some people seemed to
+enjoy.
+
+
+
+
+[11]
+
+'THE TABBY TERROR'
+
+
+The struggle between Prater's cat and Prater's cat's conscience was
+short, and ended in the hollowest of victories for the former. The
+conscience really had no sort of chance from the beginning. It was weak
+by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, while the cat was in
+excellent training, and was, moreover, backed up by a strong
+temptation. It pocketed the stakes, which consisted of most of the
+contents of a tin of sardines, and left unostentatiously by the window.
+When Smith came in after football, and found the remains, he was
+surprised, and even pained. When Montgomery entered soon afterwards, he
+questioned him on the subject.
+
+'I say, have you been having a sort of preliminary canter with the
+banquet?'
+
+'No,' said Montgomery. 'Why?'
+
+'Somebody has,' said Smith, exhibiting the empty tin. 'Doesn't seem to
+have had such a bad appetite, either.'
+
+'This reminds me of the story of the great bear, the medium bear, and
+the little ditto,' observed Montgomery, who was apt at an analogy. 'You
+may remember that when the great bear found his porridge tampered with,
+he--'
+
+At this point Shawyer entered. He had been bidden to the feast, and was
+feeling ready for it.
+
+'Hullo, tea ready?' he asked.
+
+Smith displayed the sardine tin in much the same manner as the conjurer
+shows a pack of cards when he entreats you to choose one, and remember
+the number.
+
+'You haven't finished already, surely? Why, it's only just five.'
+
+'We haven't even begun,' said Smith. 'That's just the difficulty. The
+question is, who has been on the raid in here?'
+
+'No human being has done this horrid thing,' said Montgomery. He always
+liked to introduce a Holmes-Watsonian touch into the conversation. 'In
+the first place, the door was locked, wasn't it, Smith?'
+
+'By Jove, so it was. Then how on earth--?'
+
+'Through the window, of course. The cat, equally of course. I should
+like a private word with that cat.'
+
+'I suppose it must have been.'
+
+'Of course it was. Apart from the merely circumstantial evidence, which
+is strong enough to hang it off its own bat, we have absolute proof of
+its guilt. Just cast your eye over that butter. You follow me, Watson?'
+
+The butter was submitted to inspection. In the very centre of it there
+was a footprint.
+
+'_I_ traced his little footprints in the butter,' said Montgomery.
+'Now, is that the mark of a human foot?'
+
+The jury brought in a unanimous verdict of guilty against the missing
+animal, and over a sorrowful cup of tea, eked out with bread and
+jam--butter appeared to be unpopular--discussed the matter in all its
+bearings. The cat had not been an inmate of Prater's House for a very
+long time, and up till now what depredation it had committed had been
+confined to the official larder. Now, however, it had evidently got its
+hand in, and was about to commence operations upon a more extensive
+scale. The Tabby Terror had begun. Where would it end? The general
+opinion was that something would have to be done about it. No one
+seemed to know exactly what to do. Montgomery spoke darkly of bricks,
+bits of string, and horse-ponds. Smith rolled the word 'rat-poison'
+luxuriously round his tongue. Shawyer, who was something of an expert
+on the range, babbled of air-guns.
+
+At tea on the following evening the first really serious engagement of
+the campaign took place. The cat strolled into the tea-room in the
+patronizing way characteristic of his kind, but was heavily shelled
+with lump-sugar, and beat a rapid retreat. That was the signal for the
+outbreak of serious hostilities. From that moment its paw was against
+every man, and the tale of the things it stole is too terrible to
+relate in detail. It scored all along the line. Like Death in the poem,
+it knocked at the doors of the highest and the lowest alike. Or rather,
+it did not exactly knock. It came in without knocking. The palace of
+the prefect and the hovel of the fag suffered equally. Trentham, the
+head of the House, lost sausages to an incredible amount one evening,
+and the next day Ripton, of the Lower Third, was robbed of his one ewe
+lamb in the shape of half a tin of anchovy paste. Panic reigned.
+
+It was after this matter of the sausages that a luminous idea occurred
+to Trentham. He had been laid up with a slight football accident, and
+his family, reading between the lines of his written statement that he
+'had got crocked at footer, nothing much, only (rather a nuisance)
+might do him out of the House-matches', a notification of mortal
+injuries, and seeming to hear a death-rattle through the words 'felt
+rather chippy yesterday', had come down _en masse_ to investigate.
+_En masse,_ that is to say, with the exception of his father, who
+said he was too busy, but felt sure it was nothing serious. ('Why, when
+I was a boy, my dear, I used to think nothing of an occasional tumble.
+There's nothing the matter with Dick. Why, etc., etc.')
+
+Trentham's sister was his first visitor.
+
+'I say,' said he, when he had satisfied her on the subject of his
+health, 'would you like to do me a good turn?'
+
+She intimated that she would be delighted, and asked for details.
+
+_'Buy the beak's cat,'_ hissed Trentham, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+'Dick, it _was_ your leg that you hurt, wasn't it? Not--not your
+head?' she replied. 'I mean--'
+
+'No, I really mean it. Why can't you? It's a perfectly simple thing to
+do.'
+
+'But what _is_ a beak? And why should I buy its cat?'
+
+'A beak's a master. Surely you know that. You see, Prater's got a cat
+lately, and the beast strolls in and raids the studies. Got round over
+half a pound of prime sausages in here the other night, and he's always
+bagging things everywhere. You'd be doing everyone a kindness if you
+would take him on. He'll get lynched some day if you don't. Besides,
+you want a cat for your new house, surely. Keep down the mice, and that
+sort of thing, you know. This animal's a demon for mice.' This was a
+telling argument. Trentham's sister had lately been married, and she
+certainly had had some idea of investing in a cat to adorn her home.
+'As for beetles,' continued the invalid, pushing home his advantage,
+'they simply daren't come out of their lairs for fear of him.'
+
+'If he eats beetles,' objected his sister, 'he can't have a very good
+coat.'
+
+'He doesn't eat them. Just squashes them, you know, like a policeman.
+He's a decent enough beast as far as looks go.'
+
+'But if he steals things--'
+
+'No, don't you see, he only does that here, because the Praters don't
+interfere with him and don't let us do anything to him. He won't try
+that sort of thing on with you. If he does, get somebody to hit him
+over the head with a boot-jack or something. He'll soon drop it then.
+You might as well, you know. The House'll simply black your boots if
+you do.'
+
+'But would Mr Prater let me have the cat?'
+
+'Try him, anyhow. Pitch it fairly warm, you know. Only cat you ever
+loved, and that sort of thing.'
+
+'Very well. I'll try.'
+
+'Thanks, awfully. And, I say, you might just look in here on your way
+out and report.'
+
+Mrs James Williamson, nee Miss Trentham, made her way dutifully to the
+Merevale's part of the House. Mrs Prater had expressed a hope that she
+would have some tea before catching her train. With tea it is usual to
+have milk, and with milk it is usual, if there is a cat in the house,
+to have feline society. Captain Kettle, which was the name thought
+suitable to this cat by his godfathers and godmothers, was on hand
+early. As he stood there pawing the mat impatiently, and mewing in a
+minor key, Mrs Williamson felt that here was the cat for her. He
+certainly was good to look upon. His black heart was hidden by a sleek
+coat of tabby fur, which rendered stroking a luxury. His scheming brain
+was out of sight in a shapely head.
+
+'Oh, what a lovely cat!' said Mrs Williamson.
+
+'Yes, isn't he,' agreed Mrs Prater. 'We are very proud of him.'
+
+'Such a beautiful coat!'
+
+'And such a sweet purr!'
+
+'He looks so intelligent. Has he any tricks?'
+
+Had he any tricks! Why, Mrs Williamson, he could do everything except
+speak. Captain Kettle, you bad boy, come here and die for your country.
+Puss, puss.
+
+Captain Kettle came at last reluctantly, died for his country in record
+time, and flashed back again to the saucer. He had an important
+appointment. Sorry to appear rude and all that sort of thing, don't you
+know, but he had to see a cat about a mouse.
+
+'Well?' said Trentham, when his sister looked in upon him an hour
+later.
+
+'Oh, Dick, it's the nicest cat I ever saw. I shall never be happy if I
+don't get it.'
+
+'Have you bought it?' asked the practical Trentham.
+
+'My dear Dick, I couldn't. We couldn't bargain about a cat during tea.
+Why, I never met Mrs Prater before this afternoon.'
+
+'No, I suppose not,' admitted Trentham, gloomily. 'Anyhow, look here,
+if anything turns up to make the beak want to get rid of it, I'll tell
+him you're dead nuts on it. See?'
+
+For a fortnight after this episode matters went on as before. Mrs
+Williamson departed, thinking regretfully of the cat she had left
+behind her.
+
+Captain Kettle died for his country with moderate regularity, and on
+one occasion, when he attempted to extract some milk from the very
+centre of a fag's tea-party, almost died for another reason. Then the
+end came suddenly.
+
+Trentham had been invited to supper one Sunday by Mr Prater. When he
+arrived it became apparent to him that the atmosphere was one of
+subdued gloom. At first he could not understand this, but soon the
+reason was made clear. Captain Kettle had, in the expressive language
+of the man in the street, been and gone and done it. He had been left
+alone that evening in the drawing-room, while the House was at church,
+and his eye, roaming restlessly about in search of evil to perform, had
+lighted upon a cage. In that cage was a special sort of canary, in its
+own line as accomplished an artiste as Captain Kettle himself. It sang
+with taste and feeling, and made itself generally agreeable in a number
+of little ways. But to Captain Kettle it was merely a bird. One of the
+poets sings of an acquaintance of his who was so constituted that 'a
+primrose by the river's brim a simple primrose was to him, and it was
+nothing more'. Just so with Captain Kettle. He was not the cat to make
+nice distinctions between birds. Like the cat in another poem, he only
+knew they made him light and salutary meals. So, with the exercise of
+considerable ingenuity, he extracted that canary from its cage and ate
+it. He was now in disgrace.
+
+'We shall have to get rid of him,' said Mr Prater.
+
+'I'm afraid so,' said Mrs Prater.
+
+'If you weren't thinking of giving him to anyone in particular, sir,'
+said Trentham, 'my sister would be awfully glad to take him, I know.
+She was very keen on him when she came to see me.'
+
+'That's excellent,' said Prater. 'I was afraid we should have to send
+him to a home somewhere.'
+
+'I suppose we can't keep him after all?' suggested Mrs Prater.
+
+Trentham waited in suspense.
+
+'No,' said Prater, decidedly. 'I think _not_.' So Captain Kettle
+went, and the House knew him no more, and the Tabby Terror was at an
+end.
+
+
+
+
+[12]
+
+THE PRIZE POEM
+
+
+Some quarter of a century before the period with which this story
+deals, a certain rich and misanthropic man was seized with a bright
+idea for perpetuating his memory after death, and at the same time
+harassing a certain section of mankind. So in his will he set aside a
+portion of his income to be spent on an annual prize for the best poem
+submitted by a member of the Sixth Form of St Austin's College, on a
+subject to be selected by the Headmaster. And, he added--one seems to
+hear him chuckling to himself--every member of the form must compete.
+Then he died. But the evil that men do lives after them, and each year
+saw a fresh band of unwilling bards goaded to despair by his bequest.
+True, there were always one or two who hailed this ready market for
+their sonnets and odes with joy. But the majority, being barely able to
+rhyme 'dove' with 'love', regarded the annual announcement of the
+subject chosen with feelings of the deepest disgust.
+
+The chains were thrown off after a period of twenty-seven years in this
+fashion.
+
+Reynolds of the Remove was indirectly the cause of the change. He was
+in the infirmary, convalescing after an attack of German measles, when
+he received a visit from Smith, an ornament of the Sixth.
+
+'By Jove,' remarked that gentleman, gazing enviously round the
+sick-room, 'they seem to do you pretty well here.'
+
+'Yes, not bad, is it? Take a seat. Anything been happening lately?'
+
+'Nothing much. I suppose you know we beat the M.C.C. by a wicket?'
+
+'Yes, so I heard. Anything else?'
+
+'Prize poem,' said Smith, without enthusiasm. He was not a poet.
+
+Reynolds became interested at once. If there was one role in which he
+fancied himself (and, indeed, there were a good many), it was that of a
+versifier. His great ambition was to see some of his lines in print,
+and he had contracted the habit of sending them up to various
+periodicals, with no result, so far, except the arrival of rejected
+MSS. at meal-times in embarrassingly long envelopes. Which he
+blushingly concealed with all possible speed.
+
+'What's the subject this year?' he asked.
+
+'The College--of all idiotic things.'
+
+'Couldn't have a better subject for an ode. By Jove, I wish I was in
+the Sixth.'
+
+'Wish I was in the infirmary,' said Smith.
+
+Reynolds was struck with an idea.
+
+'Look here, Smith,' he said, 'if you like I'll do you a poem, and you
+can send it up. If it gets the prize--'
+
+'Oh, it won't get the prize,' Smith put in eagerly. 'Rogers is a cert.
+for that.'
+
+'If it gets the prize,' repeated Reynolds, with asperity, 'you'll have
+to tell the Old Man all about it. He'll probably curse a bit, but that
+can't be helped. How's this for a beginning?
+
+    "Imposing pile, reared up 'midst pleasant grounds,
+    The scene of many a battle, lost or won,
+    At cricket or at football; whose red walls
+    Full many a sun has kissed 'ere day is done."'
+
+'Grand. Couldn't you get in something about the M.C.C. match? You could
+make cricket rhyme with wicket.' Smith sat entranced with his
+ingenuity, but the other treated so material a suggestion with scorn.
+
+'Well,' said Smith, 'I must be off now. We've got a House-match on.
+Thanks awfully about the poem.'
+
+Left to himself, Reynolds set himself seriously to the composing of an
+ode that should do him justice. That is to say, he drew up a chair and
+table to the open window, wrote down the lines he had already composed,
+and began chewing a pen. After a few minutes he wrote another four
+lines, crossed them out, and selected a fresh piece of paper. He then
+copied out his first four lines again. After eating his pen to a stump,
+he jotted down the two words 'boys' and 'joys' at the end of separate
+lines. This led him to select a third piece of paper, on which he
+produced a sort of _edition de luxe_ in his best handwriting, with
+the title 'Ode to the College' in printed letters at the top. He was
+admiring the neat effect of this when the door opened suddenly and
+violently, and Mrs Lee, a lady of advanced years and energetic habits,
+whose duty it was to minister to the needs of the sick and wounded in
+the infirmary, entered with his tea. Mrs Lee's method of entering a
+room was in accordance with the advice of the Psalmist, where he says,
+'Fling wide the gates'. She flung wide the gate of the sick-room, and
+the result was that what is commonly called 'a thorough draught' was
+established. The air was thick with flying papers, and when calm at
+length succeeded storm, two editions of 'Ode to the College' were lying
+on the grass outside.
+
+Reynolds attacked the tea without attempting to retrieve his vanished
+work. Poetry is good, but tea is better. Besides, he argued within
+himself, he remembered all he had written, and could easily write it
+out again. So, as far as he was concerned, those three sheets of paper
+were a closed book.
+
+Later on in the afternoon, Montgomery of the Sixth happened to be
+passing by the infirmary, when Fate, aided by a sudden gust of wind,
+blew a piece of paper at him. 'Great Scott,' he observed, as his eye
+fell on the words 'Ode to the College'. Montgomery, like Smith, was no
+expert in poetry. He had spent a wretched afternoon trying to hammer
+out something that would pass muster in the poem competition, but
+without the least success. There were four lines on the paper. Two
+more, and it would be a poem, and capable of being entered for the
+prize as such. The words 'imposing pile', with which the fragment in
+his hand began, took his fancy immensely. A poetic afflatus seized him,
+and in less than three hours he had added the necessary couplet,
+
+    How truly sweet it is for such as me
+    To gaze on thee.
+
+'And dashed neat, too,' he said, with satisfaction, as he threw the
+manuscript into his drawer. 'I don't know whether "me" shouldn't be
+"I", but they'll have to lump it. It's a poem, anyhow, within the
+meaning of the act.' And he strolled off to a neighbour's study to
+borrow a book.
+
+Two nights afterwards, Morrison, also of the Sixth, was enjoying his
+usual during prep siesta in his study. A tap at the door roused him.
+Hastily seizing a lexicon, he assumed the attitude of the seeker after
+knowledge, and said, 'Come in.' It was not the House-master, but Evans,
+Morrison's fag, who entered with pride on his face and a piece of paper
+in his hand.
+
+'I say,' he began, 'you remember you told me to hunt up some tags for
+the poem. Will this do?'
+
+Morrison took the paper with a judicial air. On it were the words:
+
+    Imposing pile, reared up 'midst pleasant grounds,
+    The scene of many a battle, lost or won,
+    At cricket or at football; whose red walls
+    Full many a sun has kissed 'ere day is done.
+
+'That's ripping, as far as it goes,' said Morrison. 'Couldn't be
+better. You'll find some apples in that box. Better take a few. But
+look here,' with sudden suspicion, 'I don't believe you made all this
+up yourself. Did you?'
+
+Evans finished selecting his apples before venturing on a reply. Then
+he blushed, as much as a member of the junior school is capable of
+blushing.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'I didn't exactly. You see, you only told me to get
+the tags. You didn't say how.'
+
+'But how did you get hold of this? Whose is it?'
+
+'Dunno. I found it in the field between the Pavilion and the
+infirmary.'
+
+'Oh! well, it doesn't matter much. They're just what I wanted, which is
+the great thing. Thanks. Shut the door, will you?' Whereupon Evans
+retired, the richer by many apples, and Morrison resumed his siesta at
+the point where he had left off.
+
+'Got that poem done yet?' said Smith to Reynolds, pouring out a cup of
+tea for the invalid on the following Sunday.
+
+'Two lumps, please. No, not quite.'
+
+'Great Caesar, man, when'll it be ready, do you think? It's got to go
+in tomorrow.'
+
+'Well, I'm really frightfully sorry, but I got hold of a grand book.
+Ever read--?'
+
+'Isn't any of it done?' asked Smith.
+
+'Only the first verse, I'm afraid. But, look here, you aren't keen on
+getting the prize. Why not send in only the one verse? It makes a
+fairly decent poem.'
+
+'Hum! Think the Old 'Un'll pass it?'
+
+'He'll have to. There's nothing in the rules about length. Here it is
+if you want it.'
+
+'Thanks. I suppose it'll be all right? So long! I must be off.'
+
+The Headmaster, known to the world as the Rev. Arthur James Perceval,
+M.A., and to the School as the Old 'Un, was sitting at breakfast,
+stirring his coffee, with a look of marked perplexity upon his
+dignified face. This was not caused by the coffee, which was excellent,
+but by a letter which he held in his left hand.
+
+'Hum!' he said. Then 'Umph!' in a protesting tone, as if someone had
+pinched him. Finally, he gave vent to a long-drawn 'Um-m-m,' in a deep
+bass. 'Most extraordinary. Really, most extraordinary. Exceedingly.
+Yes. Um. Very.' He took a sip of coffee.
+
+'My dear,' said he, suddenly. Mrs Perceval started violently. She had
+been sketching out in her mind a little dinner, and wondering whether
+the cook would be equal to it.
+
+'Yes,' she said.
+
+'My dear, this is a very extraordinary communication. Exceedingly so.
+Yes, very.'
+
+'Who is it from?'
+
+Mr Perceval shuddered. He was a purist in speech. '_From whom_,
+you should say. It is from Mr Wells, a great College friend of mine.
+I--ah--submitted to him for examination the poems sent in for the Sixth
+Form Prize. He writes in a very flippant style. I must say, very
+flippant. This is his letter:--"Dear Jimmy (really, really, he should
+remember that we are not so young as we were); dear--ahem--Jimmy. The
+poems to hand. I have read them, and am writing this from my sick-bed.
+The doctor tells me I may pull through even yet. There was only one any
+good at all, that was Rogers's, which, though--er--squiffy (tut!) in
+parts, was a long way better than any of the others. But the most
+taking part of the whole programme was afforded by the three comedians,
+whose efforts I enclose. You will notice that each begins with exactly
+the same four lines. Of course, I deprecate cribbing, but you really
+can't help admiring this sort of thing. There is a reckless daring
+about it which is simply fascinating. A horrible thought--have they
+been pulling your dignified leg? By the way, do you remember"--the rest
+of the letter is--er--on different matters.'
+
+'James! How extraordinary!'
+
+'Um, yes. I am reluctant to suspect--er--collusion, but really here
+there can be no doubt. No doubt at all. No.'
+
+'Unless,' began Mrs Perceval, tentatively. 'No doubt at all, my dear,'
+snapped Reverend Jimmy. He did not wish to recall the other
+possibility, that his dignified leg was being pulled.
+
+'Now, for what purpose did I summon you three boys?' asked Mr Perceval,
+of Smith, Montgomery, and Morrison, in his room after morning school
+that day. He generally began a painful interview with this question.
+The method had distinct advantages. If the criminal were of a nervous
+disposition, he would give himself away upon the instant. In any case,
+it was likely to startle him. 'For what purpose?' repeated the
+Headmaster, fixing Smith with a glittering eye.
+
+'I will tell you,' continued Mr Perceval. 'It was because I desired
+information, which none but you can supply. How comes it that each of
+your compositions for the Poetry Prize commences with the same four
+lines?' The three poets looked at one another in speechless
+astonishment.
+
+'Here,' he resumed, 'are the three papers. Compare them. Now,'--after
+the inspection was over--' what explanation have you to offer? Smith,
+are these your lines?'
+
+'I--er--ah--_wrote_ them, sir.'
+
+'Don't prevaricate, Smith. Are you the author of those lines?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Ah! Very good. Are you, Montgomery?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Very good. Then you, Morrison, are exonerated from all blame. You have
+been exceedingly badly treated. The first-fruit of your brain has
+been--ah--plucked by others, who toiled not neither did they spin. You
+can go, Morrison.'
+
+'But, sir--'
+
+'Well, Morrison?'
+
+'I didn't write them, sir.'
+
+'I--ah--don't quite understand you, Morrison. You say that you are
+indebted to another for these lines?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'To Smith?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'To Montgomery?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Then, Morrison, may I ask to whom you are indebted?'
+
+'I found them in the field on a piece of paper, sir.' He claimed the
+discovery himself, because he thought that Evans might possibly prefer
+to remain outside this tangle.
+
+'So did I, sir.' This from Montgomery. Mr Perceval looked bewildered,
+as indeed he was.
+
+'And did you, Smith, also find this poem on a piece of paper in the
+field?' There was a metallic ring of sarcasm in his voice.
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Ah! Then to what circumstance were you indebted for the lines?'
+
+'I got Reynolds to do them for me, sir.'
+
+Montgomery spoke. 'It was near the infirmary that I found the paper,
+and Reynolds is in there.'
+
+'So did I, sir,' said Morrison, incoherently.
+
+'Then am I to understand, Smith, that to gain the prize you resorted to
+such underhand means as this?'
+
+'No, sir, we agreed that there was no danger of my getting the prize.
+If I had got it, I should have told you everything. Reynolds will tell
+you that, sir.'
+
+'Then what object had you in pursuing this deception?'
+
+'Well, sir, the rules say everyone must send in something, and I can't
+write poetry at all, and Reynolds likes it, so I asked him to do it.'
+
+And Smith waited for the storm to burst. But it did not burst. Far down
+in Mr Perceval's system lurked a quiet sense of humour. The situation
+penetrated to it. Then he remembered the examiner's letter, and it
+dawned upon him that there are few crueller things than to make a
+prosaic person write poetry.
+
+'You may go,' he said, and the three went.
+
+And at the next Board Meeting it was decided, mainly owing to the
+influence of an exceedingly eloquent speech from the Headmaster, to
+alter the rules for the Sixth Form Poetry Prize, so that from thence
+onward no one need compete unless he felt himself filled with the
+immortal fire.
+
+
+
+
+[13]
+
+WORK
+
+
+    With a pleasure that's emphatic
+    We retire to our attic
+    With the satisfying feeling that our duty has been done.
+
+    Oh! philosophers may sing
+    Of the troubles of a king
+    But of pleasures there are many and of troubles there are none,
+    And the culminating pleasure
+    Which we treasure beyond measure
+    Is the satisfying feeling that our duty has been done.
+
+                                           _W. S. Gilbert_
+
+Work is supposed to be the centre round which school life revolves--the
+hub of the school wheel, the lode-star of the schoolboy's existence,
+and a great many other things. 'You come to school to work', is the
+formula used by masters when sentencing a victim to the wailing and
+gnashing of teeth provided by two hours' extra tuition on a hot
+afternoon. In this, I think, they err, and my opinion is backed up by
+numerous scholars of my acquaintance, who have even gone so far--on
+occasions when they themselves have been the victims--as to express
+positive disapproval of the existing state of things. In the dear, dead
+days (beyond recall), I used often to long to put the case to my
+form-master in its only fair aspect, but always refrained from motives
+of policy. Masters are so apt to take offence at the well-meant
+endeavours of their form to instruct them in the way they should go.
+
+What I should have liked to have done would have been something after
+this fashion. Entering the sanctum of the Headmaster, I should have
+motioned him to his seat--if he were seated already, have assured him
+that to rise was unnecessary. I should then have taken a seat myself,
+taking care to preserve a calm fixity of demeanour, and finally, with a
+preliminary cough, I should have embarked upon the following moving
+address: 'My dear sir, my dear Reverend Jones or Brown (as the case may
+be), believe me when I say that your whole system of work is founded on
+a fallacious dream and reeks of rottenness. No, no, I beg that you will
+not interrupt me. The real state of the case, if I may say so, is
+briefly this: a boy goes to school to enjoy himself, and, on arriving,
+finds to his consternation that a great deal more work is expected of
+him than he is prepared to do. What course, then, Reverend Jones or
+Brown, does he take? He proceeds to do as much work as will steer him
+safely between the, ah--I may say, the Scylla of punishment and the
+Charybdis of being considered what my, er--fellow-pupils euphoniously
+term a swot. That, I think, is all this morning. _Good_ day. Pray
+do not trouble to rise. I will find my way out.' I should then have
+made for the door, locked it, if possible, on the outside, and, rushing
+to the railway station, have taken a through ticket to Spitzbergen or
+some other place where Extradition treaties do not hold good.
+
+But 'twas not mine to play the Tib. Gracchus, to emulate the O.
+Cromwell. So far from pouring my opinions like so much boiling oil into
+the ear of my task-master, I was content to play the part of audience
+while _he_ did the talking, my sole remark being 'Yes'r' at fixed
+intervals.
+
+And yet I knew that I was in the right. My bosom throbbed with the
+justice of my cause. For why? The ambition of every human new boy
+is surely to become like J. Essop of the First Eleven, who can hit a
+ball over two ponds, a wood, and seven villages, rather than to
+resemble that pale young student, Mill-Stuart, who, though he can
+speak Sanskrit like a native of Sanskritia, couldn't score a single
+off a slow long-hop.
+
+And this ambition is a laudable one. For the athlete is the product of
+nature--a step towards the more perfect type of animal, while the
+scholar is the outcome of artificiality. What, I ask, does the scholar
+gain, either morally or physically, or in any other way, by knowing who
+was tribune of the people in 284 BC or what is the precise difference
+between the various constructions of _cum_? It is not as if
+ignorance of the tribune's identity caused him any mental unrest. In
+short, what excuse is there for the student? 'None,' shrieks Echo
+enthusiastically. 'None whatever.'
+
+Our children are being led to ruin by this system. They will become
+dons and think in Greek. The victim of the craze stops at nothing. He
+puns in Latin. He quips and quirks in Ionic and Doric. In the worst
+stages of the disease he will edit Greek plays and say that Merry quite
+misses the fun of the passage, or that Jebb is mediocre. Think, I beg
+of you, paterfamilias, and you, mater ditto, what your feelings would
+be were you to find Henry or Archibald Cuthbert correcting proofs of
+_The Agamemnon_, and inventing 'nasty ones' for Mr Sidgwick! Very
+well then. Be warned.
+
+Our bright-eyed lads are taught insane constructions in Greek and Latin
+from morning till night, and they come for their holidays, in many
+cases, without the merest foundation of a batting style. Ask them what
+a Yorker is, and they will say: 'A man from York, though I presume you
+mean a Yorkshireman.' They will read Herodotus without a dictionary for
+pleasure, but ask them to translate the childishly simple sentence:
+'Trott was soon in his timber-yard with a length 'un that whipped
+across from the off,' and they'll shrink abashed and swear they have
+not skill at that, as Gilbert says.
+
+The papers sometimes contain humorous forecasts of future education,
+when cricket and football shall come to their own. They little know the
+excellence of the thing they mock at. When we get schools that teach
+nothing but games, then will the sun definitely refuse to set on the
+roast beef of old England. May it be soon. Some day, mayhap, I shall
+gather my great-great-grandsons round my knee, and tell them--as one
+tells tales of Faery--that I can remember the time when Work was
+considered the be-all and the end-all of a school career. Perchance,
+when my great-great-grandson John (called John after the famous Jones
+of that name) has brought home the prize for English Essay on 'Rugby
+_v._ Association', I shall pat his head (gently) and the tears
+will come to my old eyes as I recall the time when I, too, might have
+won a prize--for that obsolete subject, Latin Prose--and was only
+prevented by the superior excellence of my thirty-and-one fellow
+students, coupled, indeed, with my own inability to conjugate
+_sum._
+
+Such days, I say, may come. But now are the Dark Ages. The only thing
+that can possibly make Work anything but an unmitigated nuisance is the
+prospect of a 'Varsity scholarship, and the thought that, in the event
+of failure, a 'Varsity career will be out of the question.
+
+With this thought constantly before him, the student can put a certain
+amount of enthusiasm into his work, and even go to the length of rising
+at five o'clock o' mornings to drink yet deeper of the cup of
+knowledge. I have done it myself. 'Varsity means games and yellow
+waistcoats and Proctors, and that sort of thing. It is worth working
+for.
+
+But for the unfortunate individual who is barred by circumstances from
+participating in these joys, what inducement is there to work? Is such
+a one to leave the school nets in order to stew in a stuffy room over a
+Thucydides? I trow not.
+
+Chapter one of my great forthcoming work, _The Compleat Slacker_,
+contains minute instructions on the art of avoiding preparation from
+beginning to end of term. Foremost among the words of advice ranks this
+maxim: Get an official list of the books you are to do, and examine
+them carefully with a view to seeing what it is possible to do unseen.
+Thus, if Virgil is among these authors, you can rely on being able to
+do him with success. People who ought to know better will tell you that
+Virgil is hard. Such a shallow falsehood needs little comment. A
+scholar who cannot translate ten lines of _The Aeneid_ between the
+time he is put on and the time he begins to speak is unworthy of pity
+or consideration, and if I meet him in the street I shall assuredly cut
+him. Aeschylus, on the other hand, is a demon, and needs careful
+watching, though in an emergency you can always say the reading is
+wrong.
+
+Sometimes the compleat slacker falls into a trap. The saddest case I
+can remember is that of poor Charles Vanderpoop. He was a bright young
+lad, and showed some promise of rising to heights as a slacker. He fell
+in this fashion. One Easter term his form had half-finished a speech of
+Demosthenes, and the form-master gave them to understand that they
+would absorb the rest during the forthcoming term. Charles, being
+naturally anxious to do as little work as possible during the summer
+months, spent his Easter holidays carefully preparing this speech, so
+as to have it ready in advance. What was his horror, on returning to
+School at the appointed date, to find that they were going to throw
+Demosthenes over altogether, and patronize Plato. Threats, entreaties,
+prayers--all were accounted nothing by the master who had led him into
+this morass of troubles. It is believed that the shock destroyed his
+reason. At any rate, the fact remains that that term (the summer term,
+mark you) he won two prizes. In the following term he won three. To
+recapitulate his outrages from that time to the present were a
+harrowing and unnecessary task. Suffice it that he is now a Regius
+Professor, and I saw in the papers a short time ago that a lecture of
+his on 'The Probable Origin of the Greek Negative', created quite a
+_furore_. If this is not Tragedy with a big T, I should like to
+know what it is.
+
+As an exciting pastime, unseen translation must rank very high.
+Everyone who has ever tried translating unseen must acknowledge that
+all other forms of excitement seem but feeble makeshifts after it. I
+have, in the course of a career of sustained usefulness to the human
+race, had my share of thrills. I have asked a strong and busy porter,
+at Paddington, when the Brighton train started. I have gone for the
+broad-jump record in trying to avoid a motor-car. I have played
+Spillikins and Ping-Pong. But never again have I felt the excitement
+that used to wander athwart my moral backbone when I was put on to
+translate a passage containing a notorious _crux_ and seventeen
+doubtful readings, with only that innate genius, which is the wonder of
+the civilized world, to pull me through. And what a glow of pride one
+feels when it is all over; when one has made a glorious, golden guess
+at the _crux_, and trampled the doubtful readings under foot with
+inspired ease. It is like a day at the seaside.
+
+Work is bad enough, but Examinations are worse, especially the Board
+Examinations. By doing from ten to twenty minutes prep every night, the
+compleat slacker could get through most of the term with average
+success. Then came the Examinations. The dabbler in unseen translations
+found himself caught as in a snare. Gone was the peaceful security in
+which he had lulled to rest all the well-meant efforts of his guardian
+angel to rouse him to a sense of his duties. There, right in front of
+him, yawned the abyss of Retribution.
+
+Alas! poor slacker. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of
+most excellent fancy. Where be his gibes now? How is he to cope with
+the fiendish ingenuity of the examiners? How is he to master the
+contents of a book of Thucydides in a couple of days? It is a fearsome
+problem. Perhaps he will get up in the small hours and work by candle
+light from two till eight o'clock. In this case he will start his day a
+mental and physical wreck. Perhaps he will try to work and be led away
+by the love of light reading.
+
+In any case he will fail to obtain enough marks to satisfy the
+examiners, though whether examiners ever are satisfied, except by Harry
+the hero of the school story (Every Lad's Library, uniform edition, 2s
+6d), is rather a doubtful question.
+
+In such straits, matters resolve themselves into a sort of drama with
+three characters. We will call our hero Smith.
+
+_Scene:_ a Study
+
+_Dramatis Personae:_
+            SMITH
+            CONSCIENCE
+            MEPHISTOPHELES
+
+_Enter_ SMITH (_down centre_)
+
+_He seats himself at table and opens a Thucydides._
+
+_Enter_ CONSCIENCE _through ceiling_ (R.), MEPHISTOPHELES
+_through floor_ (L.).
+
+CONSCIENCE (_with a kindly smile_): Precisely what I was about to
+remark, my dear lad. A little Thucydides would be a very good thing.
+Thucydides, as you doubtless know, was a very famous Athenian
+historian. Date?
+
+SMITH: Er--um--let me see.
+
+MEPH. (_aside_): Look in the Introduction and pretend you did it
+by accident.
+
+SMITH (_having done so_): 431 B.C. _circ_.
+
+CONSCIENCE _wipes away a tear_.
+
+CONSCIENCE: Thucydides made himself a thorough master of the concisest
+of styles.
+
+MEPH.: And in doing so became infernally obscure. Excuse shop.
+
+SMITH (_gloomily_): Hum!
+
+MEPH. (_sneeringly_): Ha!
+
+_Long pause_.
+
+CONSCIENCE (_gently_): Do you not think, my dear lad, that you had
+better begin? Time and tide, as you are aware, wait for no man. And--
+
+SMITH: Yes?
+
+CONSCIENCE: You have not, I fear, a very firm grasp of the subject.
+However, if you work hard till eleven--
+
+SMITH (_gloomily_): Hum! Three hours!
+
+MEPH. (_cheerily_): Exactly so. Three hours. A little more if
+anything. By the way, excuse me asking, but have you prepared the
+subject thoroughly during the term?
+
+SMITH: My _dear_ sir! Of _course!_
+
+CONSCIENCE (_reprovingly_):???!!??!
+
+SMITH: Well, perhaps, not quite so much as I might have done. Such a
+lot of things to do this term. Cricket, for instance.
+
+MEPH.: Rather. Talking of cricket, you seemed to be shaping rather well
+last Saturday. I had just run up on business, and someone told me you
+made eighty not out. Get your century all right?
+
+SMITH (_brightening at the recollection_): Just a bit--117 not
+out. I hit--but perhaps you've heard?
+
+MEPH.: Not at all, not at all. Let's hear all about it.
+
+_CONSCIENCE seeks to interpose, but is prevented by MEPH., who eggs
+SMITH on to talk cricket for over an hour._
+
+CONSCIENCE _(at last; in an acid voice)_: That is a history of the
+Peloponnesian War by Thucydides on the table in front of you. I thought
+I would mention it, in case you had forgotten.
+
+SMITH: Great Scott, yes! Here, I say, I must start.
+
+CONSCIENCE: Hear! Hear!
+
+MEPH. _(insinuatingly)_: One moment. Did you say you _had_
+prepared this book during the term? Afraid I'm a little hard of
+hearing. Eh, what?
+
+SMITH: Well--er--no, I have not. Have you ever played billiards with a
+walking-stick and five balls?
+
+MEPH.: Quite so, quite so. I quite understand. Don't you distress
+yourself, old chap. You obviously can't get through a whole book of
+Thucydides in under two hours, can you?
+
+CONSCIENCE _(severely)_: He might, by attentive application to
+study, master a considerable portion of the historian's _chef
+d'oeuvre_ in that time.
+
+MEPH.: Yes, and find that not one of the passages he had prepared was
+set in the paper.
+
+CONSCIENCE: At the least, he would, if he were to pursue the course
+which I have indicated, greatly benefit his mind.
+
+MEPH. _gives a short, derisive laugh. Long pause._
+
+MEPH. _(looking towards bookshelf)_: Hullo, you've got a decent
+lot of books, pommy word you have. _Rodney Stone, Vice Versa, Many
+Cargoes._ Ripping. Ever read _Many Cargoes?_
+
+CONSCIENCE _(glancing at his watch)_: I am sorry, but I must
+really go now. I will see you some other day.
+
+_Exit sorrowfully._
+
+MEPH.: Well, thank goodness _he's_ gone. Never saw such a fearful
+old bore in my life. Can't think why you let him hang on to you so. We
+may as well make a night of it now, eh? No use your trying to work at
+this time of night.
+
+SMITH: Not a bit.
+
+MEPH.: Did you say you'd not read _Many Cargoes?_
+
+SMITH: Never. Only got it today. Good?
+
+MEPH.: Simply ripping. All short stories. Make you yell.
+
+SMITH _(with a last effort)_: But don't you think--
+
+MEPH.: Oh no. Besides, you can easily get up early tomorrow for the
+Thucydides.
+
+SMITH: Of course I can. Never thought of that. Heave us _Many
+Cargoes._ Thanks.
+
+_Begins to read. MEPH. grins fiendishly, and vanishes through floor
+enveloped in red flame. Sobbing heard from the direction of the
+ceiling.
+
+Scene closes._
+
+Next morning, of course, he will oversleep himself, and his Thucydides
+paper will be of such a calibre that that eminent historian will writhe
+in his grave.
+
+
+
+
+[14]
+
+NOTES
+
+
+    Of all forms of lettered effusiveness, that which exploits the
+    original work of others and professes to supply us with right
+    opinions thereanent is the least wanted.
+
+                                     _Kenneth Grahame_
+
+It has always seemed to me one of the worst flaws in our mistaken
+social system, that absolutely no distinction is made between the
+master who forces the human boy to take down notes from dictation and
+the rest of mankind. I mean that, if in a moment of righteous
+indignation you rend such a one limb from limb, you will almost
+certainly be subjected to the utmost rigour of the law, and you will be
+lucky if you escape a heavy fine of five or ten shillings, exclusive of
+the costs of the case. Now, this is not right on the face of it. It is
+even wrong. The law should take into account the extreme provocation
+which led to the action. Punish if you will the man who travels
+second-class with a third-class ticket, or who borrows a pencil and
+forgets to return it; but there are occasions when justice should be
+tempered with mercy, and this murdering of pedagogues is undoubtedly
+such an occasion.
+
+It should be remembered, however, that there are two varieties of
+notes. The printed notes at the end of your Thucydides or Homer are
+distinctly useful when they aim at acting up to their true vocation,
+namely, the translating of difficult passages or words. Sometimes,
+however, the author will insist on airing his scholarship, and instead
+of translations he supplies parallel passages, which neither interest,
+elevate, nor amuse the reader. This, of course, is mere vanity. The
+author, sitting in his comfortable chair with something short within
+easy reach, recks nothing of the misery he is inflicting on hundreds of
+people who have done him no harm at all. He turns over the pages of his
+book of _Familiar Quotations_ with brutal callousness, and for
+every tricky passage in the work which he is editing, finds and makes a
+note of three or four even trickier ones from other works. Who has not
+in his time been brought face to face with a word which defies
+translation? There are two courses open to you on such an occasion, to
+look the word up in the lexicon, or in the notes. You, of course, turn
+up the notes, and find: 'See line 80.' You look up line 80, hoping to
+see a translation, and there you are told that a rather similar
+construction occurs in Xenophades' _Lyrics from a Padded Cell_. On
+this, the craven of spirit will resort to the lexicon, but the man of
+mettle will close his book with an emphatic bang, and refuse to have
+anything more to do with it. Of a different sort are the notes which
+simply translate the difficulty and subside. These are a boon to the
+scholar. Without them it would be almost impossible to prepare one's
+work during school, and we should be reduced to the prosaic expedient
+of working in prep. time. What we want is the commentator who
+translates _mensa_ as 'a table' without giving a page and a half
+of notes on the uses of the table in ancient Greece, with an excursus
+on the habit common in those times of retiring underneath it after
+dinner, and a list of the passages in Apollonius Rhodius where the word
+'table' is mentioned.
+
+These voluminous notes are apt to prove a nuisance in more ways than
+one. Your average master is generally inordinately fond of them, and
+will frequently ask some member of the form to read his note on
+so-and-so out to his fellows. This sometimes leads to curious results,
+as it is hardly to be expected that the youth called upon will be
+attending, even if he is awake, which is unlikely. On one occasion
+an acquaintance of mine, 'whose name I am not at liberty to divulge',
+was suddenly aware that he was being addressed, and, on giving the
+matter his attention, found that it was the form-master asking him to
+read out his note on _Balbus murum aedificavit_. My friend is a
+kind-hearted youth and of an obliging disposition, and would willingly
+have done what was asked of him, but there were obstacles, first and
+foremost of which ranked the fact that, taking advantage of his
+position on the back desk (whither he thought the basilisk eye of
+Authority could not reach), he had substituted _Bab Ballads_ for
+the words of Virgil, and was engrossed in the contents of that modern
+classic. The subsequent explanations lasted several hours. In fact, it
+is probable that the master does not understand the facts of the case
+thoroughly even now. It is true that he called him a 'loathsome, slimy,
+repulsive toad', but even this seems to fall short of the grandeur of
+the situation.
+
+Those notes, also, which are, alas! only too common nowadays, that deal
+with peculiarities of grammar, how supremely repulsive they are! It is
+impossible to glean any sense from them, as the Editor mixes up
+Nipperwick's view with Sidgeley's reasoning and Spreckendzedeutscheim's
+surmise with Donnerundblitzendorf's conjecture in a way that seems to
+argue a thorough unsoundness of mind and morals, a cynical insanity
+combined with a blatant indecency. He occasionally starts in a
+reasonable manner by giving one view as (1) and the next as (2). So far
+everyone is happy and satisfied. The trouble commences when he has
+occasion to refer back to some former view, when he will say: 'Thus we
+see (1) and (14) that,' etc. The unlucky student puts a finger on the
+page to keep the place, and hunts up view one. Having found this, and
+marked the spot with another finger, he proceeds to look up view
+fourteen. He places another finger on this, and reads on, as follows:
+'Zmpe, however, maintains that Schrumpff (see 3) is practically insane,
+that Spleckzh (see 34) is only a little better, and that Rswkg (see 97
+a (b) C3) is so far from being right that his views may be dismissed as
+readily as those of Xkryt (see 5x).' At this point brain-fever sets in,
+the victim's last coherent thought being a passionate wish for more
+fingers. A friend of mine who was the wonder of all who knew him, in
+that he was known to have scored ten per cent in one of these papers on
+questions like the above, once divulged to an interviewer the fact that
+he owed his success to his methods of learning rather than to his
+ability. On the night before an exam, he would retire to some secret,
+solitary place, such as the boot-room, and commence learning these
+notes by heart. This, though a formidable task, was not so bad as the
+other alternative. The result was that, although in the majority of
+cases he would put down for one question an answer that would have been
+right for another, yet occasionally, luck being with him, he would hit
+the mark. Hence his ten per cent.
+
+Another fruitful source of discomfort is provided by the type of master
+who lectures on a subject for half an hour, and then, with a bland
+smile, invites, or rather challenges, his form to write a 'good, long
+note' on the quintessence of his discourse. For the inexperienced this
+is an awful moment. They must write something--but what? For the last
+half hour they have been trying to impress the master with the fact
+that they belong to the class of people who can always listen best with
+their eyes closed. Nor poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups
+of the world can ever medicine them to that sweet sleep that they have
+just been enjoying. And now they must write a 'good, long note'. It is
+in such extremities that your veteran shows up well. He does not betray
+any discomfort. Not he. He rather enjoys the prospect, in fact, of
+being permitted to place the master's golden eloquence on paper. So he
+takes up his pen with alacrity. No need to think what to write. He
+embarks on an essay concerning the master, showing up all his flaws in
+a pitiless light, and analysing his thorough worthlessness of
+character. On so congenial a subject he can, of course, write reams,
+and as the master seldom, if ever, desires to read the 'good, long
+note', he acquires a well-earned reputation for attending in school and
+being able to express himself readily with his pen. _Vivat
+floreatque_.
+
+But all these forms of notes are as nothing compared with the notes
+that youths even in this our boasted land of freedom are forced to take
+down from dictation. Of the 'good, long note' your French scholar might
+well remark: '_C'est terrible_', but justice would compel him to
+add, as he thought of the dictation note: '_mais ce n'est pas le
+diable_'. For these notes from dictation are, especially on a warm
+day, indubitably _le diable_.
+
+Such notes are always dictated so rapidly that it is impossible to do
+anything towards understanding them as you go. You have to write your
+hardest to keep up. The beauty of this, from one point of view, is
+that, if you miss a sentence, you have lost the thread of the whole
+thing, and it is useless to attempt to take it up again at once. The
+only plan is to wait for some perceptible break in the flow of words,
+and dash in like lightning. It is much the same sort of thing as
+boarding a bus when in motion. And so you can take a long rest,
+provided you are in an obscure part of the room. In passing, I might
+add that a very pleasing indoor game can be played by asking the
+master, 'what came after so-and-so?' mentioning a point of the oration
+some half-hour back. This always provides a respite of a few minutes
+while he is thinking of some bitter repartee worthy of the occasion,
+and if repeated several times during an afternoon may cause much
+innocent merriment.
+
+Of course, the real venom that lurks hid within notes from dictation
+does not appear until the time for examination arrives. Then you find
+yourself face to face with sixty or seventy closely and badly written
+pages of a note-book, all of which must be learnt by heart if you would
+aspire to the dizzy heights of half-marks. It is useless to tell your
+examiner that you had no chance of getting up the subject. 'Why,' he
+will reply, 'I gave you notes on that very thing myself.' 'You did,
+sir,' you say, as you advance stealthily upon him, 'but as you dictated
+those notes at the rate of two hundred words a minute, and as my brain,
+though large, is not capable of absorbing sixty pages of a note-book in
+one night, how the suggestively asterisked aposiopesis do you expect me
+to know them? Ah-h-h!' The last word is a war-cry, as you fling
+yourself bodily on him, and tear him courteously, but firmly, into
+minute fragments. Experience, which, as we all know, teaches, will in
+time lead you into adopting some method by which you may evade this
+taking of notes. A good plan is to occupy yourself with the composition
+of a journal, an unofficial magazine not intended for the eyes of the
+profane, but confined rigidly to your own circle of acquaintances. The
+chief advantage of such a work is that you will continue to write while
+the notes are being dictated. To throw your pen down with an air of
+finality and begin reading some congenial work of fiction would be a
+gallant action, but impolitic. No, writing of some sort is essential,
+and as it is out of the question to take down the notes, what better
+substitute than an unofficial journal could be found? To one whose
+contributions to the School magazine are constantly being cut down to
+mere skeletons by the hands of censors, there is a rapture otherwise
+unattainable in a page of really scurrilous items about those in
+authority. Try it yourselves, my beamish lads. Think of something
+really bad about somebody. Write it down and gloat over it. Sometimes,
+indeed, it is of the utmost use in determining your future career. You
+will probably remember those Titanic articles that appeared at the
+beginning of the war in _The Weekly Luggage-Train_, dealing with
+all the crimes of the War Office--the generals, the soldiers, the
+enemy--of everybody, in fact, except the editor, staff and office-boy
+of _The W.L.T._ Well, the writer of those epoch-making articles
+confesses that he owes all his skill to his early training, when, a
+happy lad at his little desk in school, he used to write trenchantly in
+his note-book on the subject of the authorities. There is an example
+for you. Of course we can never be like him, but let, oh! let us be as
+like him as we're able to be. A final word to those lost ones who
+dictate the notes. Why are our ears so constantly assailed with
+unnecessary explanations of, and opinions on, English literature? Prey
+upon the Classics if you will. It is a revolting habit, but too common
+to excite overmuch horror. But surely anybody, presupposing a certain
+bias towards sanity, can understand the Classics of our own language,
+with the exception, of course, of Browning. Take Tennyson, for example.
+How often have we been forced to take down from dictation the miserable
+maunderings of some commentator on the subject of _Maud_. A person
+reads _Maud_, and either likes it or dislikes it. In any case his
+opinion is not likely to be influenced by writing down at express speed
+the opinions of somebody else concerning the methods or objectivity and
+subjectivity of the author when he produced the work.
+
+Somebody told me a short time ago that Shelley was an example of
+supreme, divine, superhuman genius. It is the sort of thing Mr
+Gilbert's 'rapturous maidens' might have said: 'How Botticellian! How
+Fra Angelican! How perceptively intense and consummately utter!' There
+is really no material difference.
+
+
+
+
+[15]
+
+NOW, TALKING ABOUT CRICKET--
+
+
+In the days of yore, when these white hairs were brown--or was it
+black? At any rate, they were not white--and I was at school, it was
+always my custom, when Fate obliged me to walk to school with a casual
+acquaintance, to whom I could not unburden my soul of those profound
+thoughts which even then occupied my mind, to turn the struggling
+conversation to the relative merits of cricket and football.
+
+'Do you like cricket better than footer?' was my formula. Now, though
+at the time, in order to save fruitless argument, I always agreed with
+my companion, and praised the game he praised, in the innermost depths
+of my sub-consciousness, cricket ranked a long way in front of all
+other forms of sport. I may be wrong. More than once in my career it
+has been represented to me that I couldn't play cricket for nuts. My
+captain said as much when I ran him out in _the_ match of the
+season after he had made forty-nine and looked like stopping. A bowling
+acquaintance heartily endorsed his opinion on the occasion of my
+missing three catches off him in one over. This, however, I attribute
+to prejudice, for the man I missed ultimately reached his century,
+mainly off the deliveries of my bowling acquaintance. I pointed out to
+him that, had I accepted any one of the three chances, we should have
+missed seeing the prettiest century made on the ground that season; but
+he was one of those bowlers who sacrifice all that is beautiful in the
+game to mere wickets. A sordid practice.
+
+Later on, the persistence with which my county ignored my claims to
+inclusion in the team, convinced me that I must leave cricket fame to
+others. True, I did figure, rather prominently, too, in one county
+match. It was at the Oval, Surrey _v_. Middlesex. How well I
+remember that occasion! Albert Trott was bowling (Bertie we used to
+call him); I forget who was batting. Suddenly the ball came soaring in
+my direction. I was not nervous. I put down the sandwich I was eating,
+rose from my seat, picked the ball up neatly, and returned it with
+unerring aim to a fieldsman who was waiting for it with becoming
+deference. Thunders of applause went up from the crowded ring.
+
+That was the highest point I ever reached in practical cricket. But, as
+the historian says of Mr Winkle, a man may be an excellent sportsman in
+theory, even if he fail in practice. That's me. Reader (if any), have
+you ever played cricket in the passage outside your study with a
+walking-stick and a ball of paper? That's the game, my boy, for testing
+your skill of wrist and eye. A century _v_. the M.C.C. is well
+enough in its way, but give me the man who can watch 'em in a narrow
+passage, lit only by a flickering gas-jet--one for every hit, four if
+it reaches the end, and six if it goes downstairs full-pitch, any pace
+bowling allowed. To make double figures in such a match is to taste
+life. Only you had better do your tasting when the House-master is out
+for the evening.
+
+I like to watch the young cricket idea shooting. I refer to the lower
+games, where 'next man in' umpires with his pads on, his loins girt,
+and a bat in his hand. Many people have wondered why it is that no
+budding umpire can officiate unless he holds a bat. For my part, I
+think there is little foundation for the theory that it is part of a
+semi-religious rite, on the analogy of the Freemasons' special
+handshake and the like. Nor do I altogether agree with the authorities
+who allege that man, when standing up, needs something as a prop or
+support. There is a shadow of reason, I grant, in this supposition, but
+after years of keen observation I am inclined to think that the umpire
+keeps his bat by him, firstly, in order that no unlicensed hand shall
+commandeer it unbeknownst, and secondly, so that he shall be ready to
+go in directly his predecessor is out. There is an ill-concealed
+restiveness about his movements, as he watches the batsmen getting set,
+that betrays an overwrought spirit. Then of a sudden one of them plays
+a ball on to his pad. '_'s that_?' asks the bowler, with an
+overdone carelessness. 'Clean out. Now _I'm_ in,' and already he
+is rushing up the middle of the pitch to take possession. When he gets
+to the wicket a short argument ensues. 'Look here, you idiot, I hit it
+hard.' 'Rot, man, out of the way.' '!!??!' 'Look here, Smith,
+_are_ you going to dispute the umpire's decision?' Chorus of
+fieldsmen: 'Get out, Smith, you ass. You've been given out years ago.'
+Overwhelmed by popular execration, Smith reluctantly departs,
+registering in the black depths of his soul a resolution to take on the
+umpireship at once, with a view to gaining an artistic revenge by
+giving his enemy run out on the earliest possible occasion. There is a
+primeval _insouciance_ about this sort of thing which is as
+refreshing to a mind jaded with the stiff formality of professional
+umpires as a cold shower-bath.
+
+I have made a special study of last-wicket men; they are divided into
+two classes, the deplorably nervous, or the outrageously confident. The
+nervous largely outnumber the confident. The launching of a last-wicket
+man, when there are ten to make to win, or five minutes left to make a
+draw of a losing game, is fully as impressive a ceremony as the
+launching of the latest battleship. An interested crowd harasses the
+poor victim as he is putting on his pads. 'Feel in a funk?' asks some
+tactless friend. 'N-n-no, norrabit.' 'That's right,' says the captain
+encouragingly, 'bowling's as easy as anything.'
+
+This cheers the wretch up a little, until he remembers suddenly that
+the captain himself was distinctly at sea with the despised trundling,
+and succumbed to his second ball, about which he obviously had no idea
+whatever. At this he breaks down utterly, and, if emotional, will sob
+into his batting glove. He is assisted down the Pavilion steps, and
+reaches the wickets in a state of collapse. Here, very probably, a
+reaction will set in. The sight of the crease often comes as a positive
+relief after the vague terrors experienced in the Pavilion.
+
+The confident last-wicket man, on the other hand, goes forth to battle
+with a light quip upon his lips. The lot of a last-wicket batsman, with
+a good eye and a sense of humour, is a very enviable one. The
+incredulous disgust of the fast bowler, who thinks that at last he may
+safely try that slow head-ball of his, and finds it lifted genially
+over the leg-boundary, is well worth seeing. I remember in one school
+match, the last man, unfortunately on the opposite side, did this three
+times in one over, ultimately retiring to a fluky catch in the slips
+with forty-one to his name. Nervousness at cricket is a curious thing.
+As the author of _Willow the King_, himself a county cricketer,
+has said, it is not the fear of getting out that causes funk. It is a
+sort of intangible _je ne sais quoi_. I trust I make myself clear.
+Some batsmen are nervous all through a long innings. With others the
+feeling disappears with the first boundary.
+
+A young lady--it is, of course, not polite to mention her age to the
+minute, but it ranged somewhere between eight and ten--was taken to see
+a cricket match once. After watching the game with interest for some
+time, she gave out this profound truth: 'They all attend specially to
+one man.' It would be difficult to sum up the causes of funk more
+lucidly and concisely. To be an object of interest is sometimes
+pleasant, but when ten fieldsmen, a bowler, two umpires, and countless
+spectators are eagerly watching your every movement, the thing becomes
+embarrassing.
+
+That is why it is, on the whole, preferable to be a cricket spectator
+rather than a cricket player. No game affords the spectator such unique
+opportunities of exerting his critical talents. You may have noticed
+that it is always the reporter who knows most about the game. Everyone,
+moreover, is at heart a critic, whether he represent the majesty of the
+Press or not. From the lady of Hoxton, who crushes her friend's latest
+confection with the words, 'My, wot an 'at!' down to that lowest class
+of all, the persons who call your attention (in print) to the sinister
+meaning of everything Clytemnestra says in _The Agamemnon_, the
+whole world enjoys expressing an opinion of its own about something.
+
+In football you are vouchsafed fewer chances. Practically all you can
+do is to shout 'off-side' whenever an opponent scores, which affords
+but meagre employment for a really critical mind. In cricket, however,
+nothing can escape you. Everything must be done in full sight of
+everybody. There the players stand, without refuge, simply inviting
+criticism.
+
+It is best, however, not to make one's remarks too loud. If you do, you
+call down upon yourself the attention of others, and are yourself
+criticized. I remember once, when I was of tender years, watching a
+school match, and one of the batsmen lifted a ball clean over the
+Pavilion. This was too much for my sensitive and critical young mind.
+'On the carpet, sir,' I shouted sternly, well up in the treble clef,
+'keep 'em on the carpet.' I will draw a veil. Suffice it to say that I
+became a sport and derision, and was careful for the future to
+criticize in a whisper. But the reverse by no means crushed me. Even
+now I take a melancholy pleasure in watching school matches, and saying
+So-and-So will make quite a fair _school-boy_ bat in time, but he
+must get rid of that stroke of his on the off, and that shocking
+leg-hit, and a few of those _awful_ strokes in the slips, but that
+on the whole, he is by no means lacking in promise. I find it
+refreshing. If, however, you feel compelled not merely to look on, but
+to play, as one often does at schools where cricket is compulsory, it
+is impossible to exaggerate the importance of white boots. The game you
+play before you get white boots is not cricket, but a weak imitation.
+The process of initiation is generally this. One plays in shoes for a
+few years with the most dire result, running away to square leg from
+fast balls, and so on, till despair seizes the soul. Then an angel in
+human form, in the very effective disguise of the man at the school
+boot-shop, hints that, for an absurdly small sum in cash, you may
+become the sole managing director of a pair of _white buckskin_
+boots with real spikes. You try them on. They fit, and the initiation
+is complete. You no longer run away from fast balls. You turn them
+neatly off to the boundary. In a word, you begin for the first time to
+play the game, the whole game, and nothing but the game.
+
+There are misguided people who complain that cricket is becoming a
+business more than a game, as if that were not the most fortunate thing
+that could happen. When it ceases to be a mere business and becomes a
+religious ceremony, it will be a sign that the millennium is at hand.
+The person who regards cricket as anything less than a business is no
+fit companion, gentle reader, for the likes of you and me. As long as
+the game goes in his favour the cloven hoof may not show itself. But
+give him a good steady spell of leather-hunting, and you will know him
+for what he is, a mere _dilettante_, a dabbler, in a word, a worm,
+who ought never to be allowed to play at all. The worst of this species
+will sometimes take advantage of the fact that the game in which they
+happen to be playing is only a scratch game, upon the result of which
+no very great issues hang, to pollute the air they breathe with verbal,
+and the ground they stand on with physical, buffooneries. Many a time
+have I, and many a time have you, if you are what I take you for, shed
+tears of blood, at the sight of such. Careless returns, overthrows--but
+enough of a painful subject. Let us pass on.
+
+I have always thought it a better fate for a man to be born a bowler
+than a bat. A batsman certainly gets a considerable amount of innocent
+fun by snicking good fast balls just off his wicket to the ropes, and
+standing stolidly in front against slow leg-breaks. These things are
+good, and help one to sleep peacefully o' nights, and enjoy one's
+meals. But no batsman can experience that supreme emotion of 'something
+attempted, something done', which comes to a bowler when a ball pitches
+in a hole near point's feet, and whips into the leg stump. It is one
+crowded second of glorious life. Again, the words 'retired hurt' on the
+score-sheet are far more pleasant to the bowler than the batsman. The
+groan of a batsman when a loose ball hits him full pitch in the ribs is
+genuine. But the 'Awfully-sorry-old-chap-it-slipped' of the bowler is
+not. Half a loaf is better than no bread, as Mr Chamberlain might say,
+and if he cannot hit the wicket, he is perfectly contented with hitting
+the man. In my opinion, therefore, the bowler's lot, in spite of
+billiard table wickets, red marl, and such like inventions of a
+degenerate age, is the happier one.
+
+And here, glowing with pride of originality at the thought that I have
+written of cricket without mentioning Alfred Mynn or Fuller Pilch, I
+heave a reminiscent sigh, blot my MS., and thrust my pen back into its
+sheath.
+
+
+
+
+[16]
+
+THE TOM BROWN QUESTION
+
+
+The man in the corner had been trying to worry me into a conversation
+for some time. He had asked me if I objected to having the window open.
+He had said something rather bitter about the War Office, and had hoped
+I did not object to smoking. Then, finding that I stuck to my book
+through everything, he made a fresh attack.
+
+'I see you are reading _Tom Brown's Schooldays_,' he said.
+
+This was a plain and uninteresting statement of fact, and appeared to
+me to require no answer. I read on.
+
+'Fine book, sir.'
+
+'Very.'
+
+'I suppose you have heard of the Tom Brown Question?'
+
+I shut my book wearily, and said I had not.
+
+'It is similar to the Homeric Question. You have heard of that, I
+suppose?'
+
+I knew that there was a discussion about the identity of the author of
+the Iliad. When at school I had been made to take down notes on the
+subject until I had grown to loathe the very name of Homer.
+
+'You see,' went on my companion, 'the difficulty about _Tom Brown's
+Schooldays_ is this. It is obvious that part one and part two were
+written by different people. You admit that, I suppose?'
+
+'I always thought Mr Hughes wrote the whole book.'
+
+'Dear me, not really? Why, I thought everyone knew that he only wrote
+the first half. The question is, who wrote the second. I know, but I
+don't suppose ten other people do. No, sir.'
+
+'What makes you think he didn't write the second part?'
+
+'My dear sir, just read it. Read part one carefully, and then read part
+two. Why, you can see in a minute.'
+
+I said I had read the book three times, but had never noticed anything
+peculiar about it, except that the second half was not nearly so
+interesting as the first.
+
+'Well, just tell me this. Do you think the same man created East and
+Arthur? Now then.'
+
+I admitted that it was difficult to understand such a thing.
+
+'There was a time, of course,' continued my friend, 'when everybody
+thought as you do. The book was published under Hughes's name, and it
+was not until Professor Burkett-Smith wrote his celebrated monograph on
+the subject that anybody suspected a dual, or rather a composite,
+authorship. Burkett-Smith, if you remember, based his arguments on two
+very significant points. The first of these was a comparison between
+the football match in the first part and the cricket match in the
+second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he
+went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do?
+Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Then with the usual liberality of young hands (I quote from the book)
+he put the M.C.C. in first. Now, my dear sir, I ask you, would a school
+captain do that? I am young, says one of Gilbert's characters, the
+Grand Duke, I think, but, he adds, I am not so young as that. Tom may
+have been young, but would he, _could_ he have been young enough
+to put his opponents in on a true wicket, when he had won the toss?
+Would the Tom Brown of part one have done such a thing?'
+
+'Never,' I shouted, with enthusiasm.
+
+'But that's nothing to what he does afterwards. He permits, he actually
+sits there and permits, comic songs and speeches to be made during the
+luncheon interval. Comic Songs! Do you hear me, sir? COMIC SONGS!! And
+this when he wanted every minute of time he could get to save the
+match. Would the Tom Brown of part one have done such a thing?'
+
+'Never, never.' I positively shrieked the words this time.
+
+'Burkett-Smith put that point very well. His second argument is founded
+on a single remark of Tom's, or rather--'
+
+'Or rather,' I interrupted, fiercely,' or rather of the wretched
+miserable--'
+
+'Contemptible,' said my friend.
+
+'Despicable, scoundrelly, impostor who masquerades as Tom in the second
+half of the book.'
+
+'Exactly,' said he. 'Thank you very much. I have often thought the same
+myself. The remark to which I refer is that which he makes to the
+master while he is looking on at the M.C.C. match. In passing, sir,
+might I ask you whether the Tom Brown of part one would have been on
+speaking terms with such a master?'
+
+I shook my head violently. I was too exhausted to speak.
+
+'You remember the remark? The master commented on the fact that Arthur
+is a member of the first eleven. I forget Tom's exact words, but the
+substance of them is this, that, though on his merits Arthur was not
+worth his place, he thought it would do him such a lot of good being in
+the team. Do I make myself plain, sir? He--thought--it--would--do--
+him--such--a--lot--of--good--being--in--the--team!!!'
+
+There was a pause. We sat looking at one another, forming silently with
+our lips the words that still echoed through the carriage.
+
+'Burkett-Smith,' continued my companion, 'makes a great deal of that
+remark. His peroration is a very fine piece of composition. "Whether
+(concludes he) the captain of a school cricket team who could own
+spontaneously to having been guilty of so horrible, so terrible an act
+of favouritismical jobbery, who could sit unmoved and see his team
+being beaten in the most important match of the season (and, indeed,
+for all that the author tells us it may have been the only match of the
+season), for no other reason than that he thought a first eleven cap
+would prove a valuable tonic to an unspeakable personal friend of his,
+whether, I say, the Tom Brown who acted thus could have been the Tom
+Brown who headed the revolt of the fags in part one, is a question
+which, to the present writer, offers no difficulties. I await with
+confidence the verdict of a free, enlightened, and conscientious public
+of my fellow-countrymen." Fine piece of writing, that, sir?'
+
+'Very,' I said.
+
+'That pamphlet, of course, caused a considerable stir. Opposing parties
+began to be formed, some maintaining that Burkett-Smith was entirely
+right, others that he was entirely wrong, while the rest said he might
+have been more wrong if he had not been so right, but that if he had
+not been so mistaken he would probably have been a great deal more
+correct. The great argument put forward by the supporters of what I may
+call the "One Author" view, was, that the fight in part two could not
+have been written by anyone except the author of the fight with
+Flashman in the school-house hall. And this is the point which has led
+to all the discussion. Eliminate the Slogger Williams episode, and the
+whole of the second part stands out clearly as the work of another
+hand. But there is one thing that seems to have escaped the notice of
+everybody.'
+
+'Yes?' I said.
+
+He leant forward impressively, and whispered. 'Only the actual fight is
+the work of the genuine author. The interference of Arthur has been
+interpolated!'
+
+'By Jove!' I said. 'Not really?'
+
+'Yes. Fact, I assure you. Why, think for a minute. Could a man capable
+of describing a fight as that fight is described, also be capable of
+stopping it just as the man the reader has backed all through is
+winning? It would be brutal. Positively brutal, sir!'
+
+'Then, how do you explain it?'
+
+'A year ago I could not have told you. Now I can. For five years I have
+been unravelling the mystery by the aid of that one clue. Listen. When
+Mr Hughes had finished part one, he threw down his pen and started to
+Wales for a holiday. He had been there a week or more, when one day, as
+he was reclining on the peak of a mountain looking down a deep
+precipice, he was aware of a body of men approaching him. They were
+dressed soberly in garments of an inky black. Each had side whiskers,
+and each wore spectacles. "Mr Hughes, I believe?" said the leader, as
+they came up to him.
+
+'"Your servant, sir," said he.
+
+'"We have come to speak to you on an important matter, Mr Hughes. We
+are the committee of the Secret Society For Putting Wholesome
+Literature Within The Reach Of Every Boy, And Seeing That He Gets It.
+I, sir, am the president of the S.S.F.P.W.L.W.T.R.O.E.B.A.S.T.H.G.I."
+He bowed.
+
+'"Really, sir, I--er--don't think I have the pleasure," began Mr
+Hughes.
+
+'"You shall have the pleasure, sir. We have come to speak to you about
+your book. Our representative has read Part I, and reports unfavourably
+upon it. It contains no moral. There are scenes of violence, and your
+hero is far from perfect."
+
+'"I think you mistake my object," said Mr Hughes; "Tom is a boy, not a
+patent medicine. In other words, he is not supposed to be perfect."
+
+'"Well, I am not here to bandy words. The second part of your book
+must be written to suit the rules of our Society. Do you agree, or
+shall we throw you over that precipice?"
+
+'"Never. I mean, I don't agree."
+
+'"Then we must write it for you. Remember, sir, that you will be
+constantly watched, and if you attempt to write that second part
+yourself--"' (he paused dramatically). 'So the second part was written
+by the committee of the Society. So now you know.'
+
+'But,' said I, 'how do you account for the fight with Slogger
+Williams?'
+
+'The president relented slightly towards the end, and consented to Mr
+Hughes inserting a chapter of his own, on condition that the Society
+should finish it. And the Society did. See?'
+
+'But--'
+
+'Ticket.'
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'Ticket, please, sir.'
+
+I looked up. The guard was standing at the open door. My companion had
+vanished.
+
+'Guard,' said I, as I handed him my ticket, 'where's the gentleman who
+travelled up with me?'
+
+'Gentleman, sir? I haven't seen nobody.'
+
+'Not a man in tweeds with red hair? I mean, in tweeds and owning red
+hair.'
+
+'No, sir. You've been alone in the carriage all the way up. Must have
+dreamed it, sir.'
+
+Possibly I did.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tales of St. Austin's, by P. G. Wodehouse
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