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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Prefect's Uncle, by P. G. Wodehouse
+#20 in our series by P. G. Wodehouse
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+Title: A Prefect's Uncle
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6985]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 20, 2003]
+[Date last updated: January 15, 2005]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PREFECT'S UNCLE ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+A PREFECT'S UNCLE
+
+
+
+
+by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+
+[Dedication]
+TO W. TOWNEND
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+1 Term Begins
+
+2 Introduces an Unusual Uncle
+
+3 The Uncle Makes Himself at Home
+
+4 Pringle Makes a Sporting Offer
+
+5 Farnie Gets Into Trouble--
+
+6 --and Stays There
+
+7 The Bishop Goes For a Ride
+
+8 The M.C.C. Match
+
+9 The Bishop Finishes His Ride
+
+10 In Which a Case is Fully Discussed
+
+11 Poetry and Stump-cricket
+
+12 'We, the Undersigned--'
+
+13 Leicester's House Team Goes Into a Second Edition
+
+14 Norris Takes a Short Holiday
+
+15 _Versus_ Charchester (at Charchester)
+
+16 A Disputed Authorship
+
+17 The Winter Term
+
+18 The Bishop Scores
+
+
+
+
+[1]
+
+TERM BEGINS
+
+
+Marriott walked into the senior day-room, and, finding no one there,
+hurled his portmanteau down on the table with a bang. The noise brought
+William into the room. William was attached to Leicester's House,
+Beckford College, as a mixture of butler and bootboy. He carried a pail
+of water in his hand. He had been engaged in cleaning up the House
+against the conclusion of the summer holidays, of which this was the
+last evening, by the simple process of transferring all dust, dirt, and
+other foreign substances from the floor to his own person.
+
+''Ullo, Mr Marriott,' he said.
+
+'Hullo, William,' said Marriott. 'How are you? Still jogging along?
+That's a mercy. I say, look here, I want a quiet word in season with
+the authorities. They must have known I was coming back this evening.
+Of course they did. Why, they specially wrote and asked me. Well,
+where's the red carpet? Where's the awning? Where's the brass band that
+ought to have met me at the station? Where's anything? I tell you what
+it is, William, my old companion, there's a bad time coming for the
+Headmaster if he doesn't mind what he's doing. He must learn that life
+is stern and life is earnest, William. Has Gethryn come back yet?'
+
+William, who had been gasping throughout this harangue, for the
+intellectual pressure of Marriott's conversation (of which there was
+always plenty) was generally too much for him, caught thankfully at the
+last remark as being the only intelligible one uttered up to present
+date, and made answer--
+
+'Mr Gethryn 'e's gorn out on to the field, Mr Marriott. 'E come 'arf an
+hour ago.'
+
+'Oh! Right. Thanks. Goodbye, William. Give my respects to the cook, and
+mind you don't work too hard. Think what it would be if you developed
+heart disease. Awful! You mustn't do it, William.'
+
+Marriott vanished, and William, slightly dazed, went about his
+professional duties once more. Marriott walked out into the grounds in
+search of Gethryn. Gethryn was the head of Leicester's this term,
+_vice_ Reynolds departed, and Marriott, who was second man up,
+shared a study with him. Leicester's had not a good name at Beckford,
+in spite of the fact that it was generally in the running for the
+cricket and football cups. The fact of the matter was that, with the
+exception of Gethryn, Marriott, a boy named Reece, who kept wicket for
+the School Eleven, and perhaps two others, Leicester's seniors were not
+a good lot. To the School in general, who gauged a fellow's character
+principally by his abilities in the cricket and football fields, it
+seemed a very desirable thing to be in Leicester's. They had been
+runners-up for the House football cup that year, and this term might
+easily see the cricket cup fall to them. Amongst the few, however, it
+was known that the House was passing through an unpleasant stage in its
+career. A House is either good or bad. It is seldom that it can combine
+the advantages of both systems. Leicester's was bad.
+
+This was due partly to a succession of bad Head-prefects, and partly to
+Leicester himself, who was well-meaning but weak. His spirit was
+willing, but his will was not spirited. When things went on that ought
+not to have gone on, he generally managed to avoid seeing them, and the
+things continued to go on. Altogether, unless Gethryn's rule should act
+as a tonic, Leicester's was in a bad way.
+
+The Powers that Be, however, were relying on Gethryn to effect some
+improvement. He was in the Sixth, the First Fifteen, and the First
+Eleven. Also a backbone was included in his anatomy, and if he made up
+his mind to a thing, that thing generally happened.
+
+The Rev. James Beckett, the Headmaster of Beckford, had formed a very
+fair estimate of Gethryn's capabilities, and at the moment when
+Marriott was drawing the field for the missing one, that worthy was
+sitting in the Headmaster's study with a cup in his right hand and a
+muffin (half-eaten) in his left, drinking in tea and wisdom
+simultaneously. The Head was doing most of the talking. He had led up
+to the subject skilfully, and, once reached, he did not leave it. The
+text of his discourse was the degeneracy of Leicester's.
+
+'Now, you know, Gethryn--another muffin? Help yourself. You know,
+Reynolds--well, he was a capital boy in his way, capital, and I'm sure
+we shall all miss him very much--_but_ he was not a good head of a
+House. He was weak. Much too weak. Too easy-going. You must avoid that,
+Gethryn. Reynolds....' And much more in the same vein. Gethryn left the
+room half an hour later full of muffins and good resolutions. He met
+Marriott at the fives-courts.
+
+'Where have you been to?' asked Marriott. 'I've been looking for you
+all over the shop.'
+
+'I and my friend the Headmaster,' said Gethryn, 'have been having a
+quiet pot of tea between us.'
+
+'Really? Was he affable?'
+
+'Distinctly affable.'
+
+'You know,' said Marriott confidentially, 'he asked me in, but I told
+him it wasn't good enough. I said that if he would consent to make his
+tea with water that wasn't two degrees below lukewarm, and bring on his
+muffins cooked instead of raw, and supply some butter to eat with them,
+I might look him up now and then. Otherwise it couldn't be done at the
+price. But what did he want you for, really?'
+
+'He was ragging me about the House. Quite right, too. You know, there's
+no doubt about it, Leicester's does want bucking up.'
+
+'We're going to get the cricket cup,' said Marriott, for the defence.
+
+'We may. If it wasn't for the Houses in between. School House and
+Jephson's especially. And anyhow, that's not what I meant. The games
+are all right. It's--'
+
+'The moral _je-ne-sais-quoi_, so to speak,' said Marriott.
+'That'll be all right. Wait till we get at 'em. What I want you to turn
+your great brain to now is this letter.'
+
+He produced a letter from his pocket. 'Don't you bar chaps who show you
+their letters?' he said. 'This was written by an aunt of mine. I don't
+want to inflict the whole lot on you. Just look at line four. You see
+what she says: "A boy is coming to Mr Leicester's House this term, whom
+I particularly wish you to befriend. He is the son of a great friend of
+a friend of mine, and is a nice, bright little fellow, very jolly and
+full of spirits."'
+
+'That means,' interpolated Gethryn grimly, 'that he is up to the eyes
+in pure, undiluted cheek, and will want kicking after every meal and
+before retiring to rest. Go on.'
+
+'His name is--'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'That's the point. At this point the manuscript becomes absolutely
+illegible. I have conjectured Percy for the first name. It may be
+Richard, but I'll plunge on Percy. It's the surname that stumps me.
+Personally, I think it's MacCow, though I trust it isn't, for the kid's
+sake. I showed the letter to my brother, the one who's at Oxford. He
+swore it was Watson, but, on being pressed, hedged with Sandys. You may
+as well contribute your little bit. What do you make of it?'
+
+Gethryn scrutinized the document with care.
+
+'She begins with a D. You can see that.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Next letter a or u. I see. Of course. It's Duncan.'
+
+'Think so?' said Marriott doubtfully. 'Well, let's go and ask the
+matron if she knows anything about him.'
+
+'Miss Jones,' he said, when they had reached the House, 'have you on
+your list of new boys a sportsman of the name of MacCow or Watson? I am
+also prepared to accept Sandys or Duncan. The Christian name is either
+Richard or Percy. There, that gives you a fairly wide field to choose
+from.'
+
+'There's a P. V. Wilson on the list,' said the matron, after an
+inspection of that document.
+
+'That must be the man,' said Marriott. 'Thanks very much. I suppose he
+hasn't arrived yet?'
+
+'No, not yet. You two are the only ones so far.'
+
+'Oh! Well, I suppose I shall have to see him when he does come. I'll
+come down for him later on.'
+
+They strolled out on to the field again.
+
+'In _re_ the proposed bucking-up of the House,' said Marriott,
+'it'll be rather a big job.'
+
+'Rather. I should think so. We ought to have a most fearfully sporting
+time. It's got to be done. The Old Man talked to me like several
+fathers.'
+
+'What did he say?'
+
+'Oh, heaps of things.'
+
+'I know. Did he mention amongst other things that Reynolds was the
+worst idiot on the face of this so-called world?'
+
+'Something of the sort.'
+
+'So I should think. The late Reynolds was a perfect specimen of the
+gelatine-backboned worm. That's not my own, but it's the only
+description of him that really suits. Monk and Danvers and the mob in
+general used to do what they liked with him. Talking of Monk, when you
+embark on your tour of moral agitation, I should advise you to start
+with him.'
+
+'Yes. And Danvers. There isn't much to choose between them. It's a pity
+they're both such good bats. When you see a chap putting them through
+the slips like Monk does, you can't help thinking there must be
+something in him.'
+
+'So there is,' said Marriott, 'and it's all bad. I bar the man. He's
+slimy. It's the only word for him. And he uses scent by the gallon.
+Thank goodness this is his last term.'
+
+'Is it really? I never heard that.'
+
+'Yes. He and Danvers are both leaving. Monk's going to Heidelberg to
+study German, and Danvers is going into his pater's business in the
+City. I got that from Waterford.'
+
+'Waterford is another beast,' said Gethryn thoughtfully. 'I suppose
+he's not leaving by any chance?'
+
+'Not that I know of. But he'll be nothing without Monk and Danvers.
+He's simply a sort of bottle-washer to the firm. When they go he'll
+collapse. Let's be strolling towards the House now, shall we? Hullo!
+Our only Reece! Hullo, Reece!'
+
+'Hullo!' said the new arrival. Reece was a weird, silent individual,
+whom everybody in the School knew up to a certain point, but very few
+beyond that point. His manner was exactly the same when talking to the
+smallest fag as when addressing the Headmaster. He rather gave one the
+impression that he was thinking of something a fortnight ahead, or
+trying to solve a chess problem without the aid of the board. In
+appearance he was on the short side, and thin. He was in the Sixth, and
+a conscientious worker. Indeed, he was only saved from being considered
+a swot, to use the vernacular, by the fact that from childhood's
+earliest hour he had been in the habit of keeping wicket like an angel.
+To a good wicket-keeper much may be forgiven.
+
+He handed Gethryn an envelope.
+
+'Letter, Bishop,' he said. Gethryn was commonly known as the Bishop,
+owing to a certain sermon preached in the College chapel some five
+years before, in aid of the Church Missionary Society, in which the
+preacher had alluded at frequent intervals to another Gethryn, a
+bishop, who, it appeared, had a see, and did much excellent work among
+the heathen at the back of beyond. Gethryn's friends and acquaintances,
+who had been alternating between 'Ginger'--Gethryn's hair being
+inclined to redness--and 'Sneg', a name which utterly baffles the
+philologist, had welcomed the new name warmly, and it had stuck ever
+since. And, after all, there are considerably worse names by which one
+might be called.
+
+'What the dickens!' he said, as he finished reading the letter.
+
+'Tell us the worst,' said Marriott. 'You must read it out now out of
+common decency, after rousing our expectations like that.'
+
+'All right! It isn't private. It's from an aunt of mine.'
+
+'Seems to be a perfect glut of aunts,' said Marriott. 'What views has
+your representative got to air? Is _she_ springing any jolly
+little fellow full of spirits on this happy community?'
+
+'No, it's not that. It's only an uncle of mine who's coming down here.
+He's coming tomorrow, and I'm to meet him. The uncanny part of it is
+that I've never heard of him before in my life.'
+
+'That reminds me of a story I heard--' began Reece slowly. Reece's
+observations were not frequent, but when they came, did so for the most
+part in anecdotal shape. Somebody was constantly doing something which
+reminded him of something he had heard somewhere from somebody. The
+unfortunate part of it was that he exuded these reminiscences at such a
+leisurely rate of speed that he was rarely known to succeed in
+finishing any of them. He resembled those serial stories which appear
+in papers destined at a moderate price to fill an obvious void, and
+which break off abruptly at the third chapter, owing to the premature
+decease of the said periodicals. On this occasion Marriott cut in with
+a few sage remarks on the subject of uncles as a class. 'Uncles,' he
+said, 'are tricky. You never know where you've got 'em. You think
+they're going to come out strong with a sovereign, and they make it a
+shilling without a blush. An uncle of mine once gave me a threepenny
+bit. If it hadn't been that I didn't wish to hurt his feelings, I
+should have flung it at his feet. Also I particularly wanted threepence
+at the moment. Is your uncle likely to do his duty, Bishop?'
+
+'I tell you I don't know the man. Never heard of him. I thought I knew
+every uncle on the list, but I can't place this one. However, I suppose
+I shall have to meet him.'
+
+'Rather,' said Marriott, as they went into the House; 'we should always
+strive to be kind, even to the very humblest. On the off chance, you
+know. The unknown may have struck it rich in sheep or something out in
+Australia. Most uncles come from Australia. Or he may be the boss of
+some trust, and wallowing in dollars. He may be anything. Let's go and
+brew, Bishop. Come on, Reece.'
+
+'I don't mind watching you two chaps eat,' said Gethryn, 'but I can't
+join in myself. I have assimilated three pounds odd of the
+Headmagisterial muffins already this afternoon. Don't mind me, though.'
+
+They went upstairs to Marriott's study, which was also Gethryn's. Two
+in a study was the rule at Beckford, though there were recluses who
+lived alone, and seemed to enjoy it.
+
+When the festive board had ceased to groan, and the cake, which
+Marriott's mother had expected to last a fortnight, had been reduced to
+a mere wreck of its former self, the thought of his aunt's friend's
+friend's son returned to Marriott, and he went down to investigate,
+returning shortly afterwards unaccompanied, but evidently full of news.
+
+'Well?' said Gethryn. 'Hasn't he come?'
+
+'A little,' said Marriott, 'just a little. I went down to the fags'
+room, and when I opened the door I noticed a certain weird stillness in
+the atmosphere. There is usually a row going on that you could cut with
+a knife. I looked about. The room was apparently empty. Then I observed
+a quaint object on the horizon. Do you know one Skinner by any chance?'
+
+'My dear chap!' said Gethryn. Skinner was a sort of juvenile Professor
+Moriarty, a Napoleon of crime. He reeked of crime. He revelled in his
+wicked deeds. If a Dormitory-prefect was kept awake at night by some
+diabolically ingenious contrivance for combining the minimum of risk
+with the maximum of noise, then it was Skinner who had engineered the
+thing. Again, did a master, playing nervously forward on a bad pitch at
+the nets to Gosling, the School fast bowler, receive the ball gaspingly
+in the small ribs, and look round to see whose was that raucous laugh
+which had greeted the performance, he would observe a couple of yards
+away Skinner, deep in conversation with some friend of equally
+villainous aspect. In short, in a word, the only adequate word, he was
+Skinner.
+
+'Well?' said Reece.
+
+'Skinner,' proceeded Marriott, 'was seated in a chair, bleeding freely
+into a rather dirty pocket-handkerchief. His usual genial smile was
+hampered by a cut lip, and his right eye was blacked in the most
+graceful and pleasing manner. I made tender inquiries, but could get
+nothing from him except grunts. So I departed, and just outside the
+door I met young Lee, and got the facts out of him. It appears that P.
+V. Wilson, my aunt's friend's friend's son, entered the fags' room at
+four-fifteen. At four-fifteen-and-a-half, punctually, Skinner was
+observed to be trying to rag him. Apparently the great Percy has no
+sense of humour, for at four-seventeen he got tired of it, and hit
+Skinner crisply in the right eyeball, blacking the same as per
+illustration. The subsequent fight raged gorily for five minutes odd,
+and then Wilson, who seems to be a professional pugilist in disguise,
+landed what my informant describes as three corkers on his opponent's
+proboscis. Skinner's reply was to sit down heavily on the floor, and
+give him to understand that the fight was over, and that for the next
+day or two his face would be closed for alterations and repairs. Wilson
+thereupon harangued the company in well-chosen terms, tried to get
+Skinner to shake hands, but failed, and finally took the entire crew
+out to the shop, where they made pigs of themselves at his expense. I
+have spoken.'
+
+'And that's the kid you've got to look after,' said Reece, after a
+pause.
+
+'Yes,' said Marriott. 'What I maintain is that I require a kid built on
+those lines to look after me. But you ought to go down and see
+Skinner's eye sometime. It's a beautiful bit of work.'
+
+
+
+
+[2]
+
+INTRODUCES AN UNUSUAL UNCLE
+
+
+On the following day, at nine o'clock, the term formally began. There
+is nothing of Black Monday about the first day of term at a public
+school. Black Monday is essentially a private school institution.
+
+At Beckford the first day of every term was a half holiday. During the
+morning a feeble pretence of work was kept up, but after lunch the
+school was free, to do as it pleased and to go where it liked. The nets
+were put up for the first time, and the School professional emerged at
+last from his winter retirement with his, 'Coom _right_ out to
+'em, sir, right forward', which had helped so many Beckford cricketers
+to do their duty by the School in the field. There was one net for the
+elect, the remnants of last year's Eleven and the 'probables' for this
+season, and half a dozen more for lesser lights.
+
+At the first net Norris was batting to the bowling of Gosling, a long,
+thin day boy, Gethryn, and the professional--as useful a trio as any
+school batsman could wish for. Norris was captain of the team this
+year, a sound, stylish bat, with a stroke after the manner of Tyldesley
+between cover and mid-off, which used to make Miles the professional
+almost weep with joy. But today he had evidently not quite got into
+form. Twice in successive balls Gosling knocked his leg stump out of
+the ground with yorkers, and the ball after that, Gethryn upset his
+middle with a beauty.
+
+'Hat-trick, Norris,' shouted Gosling.
+
+'Can't see 'em a bit today. Bowled, Bishop.'
+
+A second teaser from Gethryn had almost got through his defence. The
+Bishop was undoubtedly a fine bowler. Without being quite so fast as
+Gosling, he nevertheless contrived to work up a very considerable speed
+when he wished to, and there was always something in every ball he
+bowled which made it necessary for the batsman to watch it all the way.
+In matches against other schools it was generally Gosling who took the
+wickets. The batsmen were bothered by his pace. But when the M.C.C. or
+the Incogniti came down, bringing seasoned county men who knew what
+fast bowling really was, and rather preferred it on the whole to slow,
+then Gethryn was called upon.
+
+Most Beckfordians who did not play cricket on the first day of term
+went on the river. A few rode bicycles or strolled out into the country
+in couples, but the majority, amongst whom on this occasion was
+Marriott, sallied to the water and hired boats. Marriott was one of the
+six old cricket colours--the others were Norris, Gosling, Gethryn,
+Reece, and Pringle of the School House--who formed the foundation of
+this year's Eleven. He was not an ornamental bat, but stood quite alone
+in the matter of tall hitting. Twenty minutes of Marriott when in form
+would often completely alter the course of a match. He had been given
+his colours in the previous year for making exactly a hundred in
+sixty-one minutes against the Authentics when the rest of the team had
+contributed ninety-eight. The Authentics made a hundred and
+eighty-four, so that the School just won; and the story of how there
+were five men out in the deep for him, and how he put the slow bowler
+over their heads and over the ropes eight times in three overs, had
+passed into a school legend.
+
+But today other things than cricket occupied his attention. He had run
+Wilson to earth, and was engaged in making his acquaintance, according
+to instructions received.
+
+'Are you Wilson?' he asked. 'P.V. Wilson?'
+
+Wilson confirmed the charge.
+
+'My name's Marriott. Does that convey any significance to your young
+mind?'
+
+'Oh, yes. My mater knows somebody who knows your aunt.'
+
+'It is a true bill.'
+
+'And she said you would look after me. I know you won't have time, of
+course.'
+
+'I expect I shall have time to give you all the looking after you'll
+require. It won't be much, from all I've heard. Was all that true about
+you and young Skinner?'
+
+Wilson grinned.
+
+'I did have a bit of a row with a chap called Skinner,' he admitted.
+
+'So Skinner seems to think,' said Marriott. 'What was it all about?'
+
+'Oh, he made an ass of himself,' said Wilson vaguely.
+
+Marriott nodded.
+
+'He would. I know the man. I shouldn't think you'd have much trouble
+with Skinner in the future. By the way, I've got you for a fag this
+term. You don't have to do much in the summer. Just rot around, you
+know, and go to the shop for biscuits and things, that's all. And,
+within limits of course, you get the run of the study.'
+
+'I see,' said Wilson gratefully. The prospect was pleasant.
+
+'Oh yes, and it's your privilege to pipe-clay my cricket boots
+occasionally before First matches. You'll like that. Can you steer a
+boat?'
+
+'I don't think so. I never tried.'
+
+'It's easy enough. I'll tell you what to do. Anyhow, you probably won't
+steer any worse than I row, so let's go and get a boat out, and I'll
+try and think of a few more words of wisdom for your benefit.'
+
+At the nets Norris had finished his innings, and Pringle was batting in
+his stead. Gethryn had given up his ball to Baynes, who bowled slow
+leg-breaks, and was the most probable of the probables above-mentioned.
+He went to where Norris was taking off his pads, and began to talk to
+him. Norris was the head of Jephson's House, and he and the Bishop were
+very good friends, in a casual sort of way. If they did not see one
+another for a couple of days, neither of them broke his heart.
+Whenever, on the other hand, they did meet, they were always glad, and
+always had plenty to talk about. Most school friendships are of that
+description.
+
+'You were sending down some rather hot stuff,' said Norris, as Gethryn
+sat down beside him, and began to inspect Pringle's performance with a
+critical eye.
+
+'I did feel rather fit,' said he. 'But I don't think half those that
+got you would have taken wickets in a match. You aren't in form yet.'
+
+'I tell you what it is, Bishop,' said Norris, 'I believe I'm going to
+be a rank failure this season. Being captain does put one off.'
+
+'Don't be an idiot, man. How can you possibly tell after one day's play
+at the nets?'
+
+'I don't know. I feel so beastly anxious somehow. I feel as if I was
+personally responsible for every match lost. It was all right last year
+when John Brown was captain. Good old John! Do you remember his running
+you out in the Charchester match?'
+
+'Don't,' said Gethryn pathetically. 'The only time I've ever felt as if
+I really was going to make that century. By Jove, see that drive?
+Pringle seems all right.'
+
+'Yes, you know, he'll simply walk into his Blue when he goes up to the
+Varsity. What do you think of Baynes?'
+
+'Ought to be rather useful on his wicket. Jephson thinks he's good.'
+
+Mr Jephson looked after the School cricket.
+
+'Yes, I believe he rather fancies him,' said Norris. 'Says he ought to
+do some big things if we get any rain. Hullo, Pringle, are you coming
+out? You'd better go in, then, Bishop.'
+
+'All right. Thanks. Oh, by Jove, though, I forgot. I can't. I've got to
+go down to the station to meet an uncle of mine.'
+
+'What's he coming up today for? Why didn't he wait till we'd got a
+match of sorts on?'
+
+'I don't know. The man's probably a lunatic. Anyhow, I shall have to go
+and meet him, and I shall just do it comfortably if I go and change
+now.'
+
+'Oh! Right you are! Sammy, do you want a knock?'
+
+Samuel Wilberforce Gosling, known to his friends and admirers as Sammy,
+replied that he did not. All he wanted now, he said, was a drink, or
+possibly two drinks, and a jolly good rest in the shade somewhere.
+Gosling was one of those rare individuals who cultivate bowling at the
+expense of batting, a habit the reverse of what usually obtains in
+schools.
+
+Norris admitted the justice of his claims, and sent in a Second Eleven
+man, Baker, a member of his own House, in Pringle's place. Pringle and
+Gosling adjourned to the School shop for refreshment.
+
+Gethryn walked with them as far as the gate which opened on to the road
+where most of the boarding Houses stood, and then branched off in the
+direction of Leicester's. To change into everyday costume took him a
+quarter of an hour, at the end of which period he left the House, and
+began to walk down the road in the direction of the station.
+
+It was an hour's easy walking between Horton, the nearest station to
+Beckford, and the College. Gethryn, who was rather tired after his
+exertions at the nets, took it very easily, and when he arrived at his
+destination the church clock was striking four.
+
+'Is the three-fifty-six in yet?' he asked of the solitary porter who
+ministered to the needs of the traveller at Horton station.
+
+'Just a-coming in now, zur,' said the porter, adding, in a sort of
+inspired frenzy: ''Orton! 'Orton stertion! 'Orton!' and ringing a bell
+with immense enthusiasm and vigour.
+
+Gethryn strolled to the gate, where the station-master's son stood at
+the receipt of custom to collect the tickets. His uncle was to arrive
+by this train, and if he did so arrive, must of necessity pass this way
+before leaving the platform. The train panted in, pulled up, whistled,
+and puffed out again, leaving three people behind it. One of these was
+a woman of sixty (approximately), the second a small girl of ten, the
+third a young gentleman in a top hat and Etons, who carried a bag, and
+looked as if he had seen the hollowness of things, for his face wore a
+bored, supercilious look. His uncle had evidently not arrived, unless
+he had come disguised as an old woman, an act of which Gethryn refused
+to believe him capable.
+
+He enquired as to the next train that was expected to arrive from
+London. The station-master's son was not sure, but would ask the
+porter, whose name it appeared was Johnny. Johnny gave the correct
+answer without an effort. 'Seven-thirty it was, sir, except on
+Saturdays, when it was eight o'clock.'
+
+'Thanks,' said the Bishop. 'Dash the man, he might at least have
+wired.'
+
+He registered a silent wish concerning the uncle who had brought him a
+long three miles out of his way with nothing to show at the end of it,
+and was just turning to leave the station, when the top-hatted small
+boy, who had been hovering round the group during the conversation,
+addressed winged words to him. These were the winged words--
+
+'I say, are you looking for somebody?' The Bishop stared at him as a
+naturalist stares at a novel species of insect.
+
+'Yes,' he said. 'Why?'
+
+'Is your name Gethryn?'
+
+This affair, thought the Bishop, was beginning to assume an uncanny
+aspect.
+
+'How the dickens did you know that?' he said.
+
+'Oh, then you are Gethryn? That's all right. I was told you were going
+to be here to meet this train. Glad to make your acquaintance. My
+name's Farnie. I'm your uncle, you know.'
+
+'My what?' gurgled the Bishop.
+
+'Your uncle. U-n, un; c-l-e--kul. Uncle. Fact, I assure you.'
+
+
+
+
+[3]
+
+THE UNCLE MAKES HIMSELF AT HOME
+
+
+'But, dash it,' said Gethryn, when he had finished gasping, 'that must
+be rot!'
+
+'Not a bit,' said the self-possessed youth. 'Your mater was my elder
+sister. You'll find it works out all right. Look here. A, the daughter
+of B and C, marries. No, look here. I was born when you were four.
+See?'
+
+Then the demoralized Bishop remembered. He had heard of his juvenile
+uncle, but the tales had made little impression upon him. Till now they
+had not crossed one another's tracks.
+
+'Oh, all right,' said he, 'I'll take your word for it. You seem to have
+been getting up the subject.'
+
+'Yes. Thought you might want to know about it. I say, how far is it to
+Beckford, and how do you get there?'
+
+Up till now Gethryn had scarcely realized that his uncle was actually
+coming to the School for good. These words brought the fact home to
+him.
+
+'Oh, Lord,' he said, 'are you coming to Beckford?'
+
+The thought of having his footsteps perpetually dogged by an uncle four
+years younger than himself, and manifestly a youth with a fine taste in
+cheek, was not pleasant.
+
+'Of course,' said his uncle. 'What did you think I was going to do?
+Camp out on the platform?'
+
+'What House are you in?'
+
+'Leicester's.'
+
+The worst had happened. The bitter cup was full, the iron neatly
+inserted in Gethryn's soul. In his most pessimistic moments he had
+never looked forward to the coming term so gloomily as he did now. His
+uncle noted his lack of enthusiasm, and attributed it to anxiety on
+behalf of himself.
+
+'What's up?' he asked. 'Isn't Leicester's all right? Is Leicester a
+beast?'
+
+'No. He's a perfectly decent sort of man. It's a good enough House. At
+least it will be this term. I was only thinking of something.'
+
+'I see. Well, how do you get to the place?'
+
+'Walk. It isn't far.'
+
+'How far?'
+
+'Three miles.'
+
+'The porter said four.'
+
+'It may be four. I never measured it.'
+
+'Well, how the dickens do you think I'm going to walk four miles with
+luggage? I wish you wouldn't rot.'
+
+And before Gethryn could quite realize that he, the head of
+Leicester's, the second-best bowler in the School, and the best centre
+three-quarter the School had had for four seasons, had been requested
+in a peremptory manner by a youth of fourteen, a mere kid, not to rot,
+the offender was talking to a cabman out of the reach of retaliation.
+Gethryn became more convinced every minute that this was no ordinary
+kid.
+
+'This man says,' observed Farnie, returning to Gethryn, 'that he'll
+drive me up to the College for seven bob. As it's a short four miles,
+and I've only got two boxes, it seems to me that he's doing himself
+fairly well. What do you think?'
+
+'Nobody ever gives more than four bob,' said Gethryn.
+
+'I told you so,' said Farnie to the cabman. 'You are a bally swindler,'
+he added admiringly.
+
+'Look 'ere,' began the cabman, in a pained voice.
+
+'Oh, dry up,' said Farnie. 'Want a lift, Gethryn?'
+
+The words were spoken not so much as from equal to equal as in a tone
+of airy patronage which made the Bishop's blood boil. But as he
+intended to instil a few words of wisdom into his uncle's mind, he did
+not refuse the offer.
+
+The cabman, apparently accepting the situation as one of those slings
+and arrows of outrageous fortune which no man can hope to escape,
+settled down on the box, clicked up his horse, and drove on towards the
+College.
+
+'What sort of a hole is Beckford?' asked Farnie, after the silence had
+lasted some time.
+
+'I find it good enough personally,' said Gethryn. 'If you'd let us know
+earlier that you were coming, we'd have had the place done up a bit for
+you.'
+
+This, of course, was feeble, distinctly feeble. But the Bishop was not
+feeling himself. The essay in sarcasm left the would-be victim entirely
+uncrushed. He should have shrunk and withered up, or at the least have
+blushed. But he did nothing of the sort. He merely smiled in his
+supercilious way, until the Bishop felt very much inclined to spring
+upon him and throw him out of the cab.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+'Farnie,' began Gethryn at last.
+
+'Um?'
+
+'Doesn't it strike you that for a kid like you you've got a good deal
+of edge on?' asked Gethryn.
+
+Farnie effected a masterly counter-stroke. He pretended not to be able
+to hear. He was sorry, but would the Bishop mind repeating his remark.
+
+'Eh? What?' he said. 'Very sorry, but this cab's making such a row. I
+say, cabby, why don't you sign the pledge, and save your money up to
+buy a new cab? Eh? Oh, sorry! I wasn't listening.' Now, inasmuch as the
+whole virtue of the 'wretched-little-kid-like-you' argument lies in the
+crisp despatch with which it is delivered, Gethryn began to find, on
+repeating his observation for the third time, that there was not quite
+so much in it as he had thought. He prudently elected to change his
+style of attack.
+
+'It doesn't matter,' he said wearily, as Farnie opened his mouth to
+demand a fourth encore, 'it wasn't anything important. Now, look here,
+I just want to give you a few tips about what to do when you get to the
+Coll. To start with, you'll have to take off that white tie you've got
+on. Black and dark blue are the only sorts allowed here.'
+
+'How about yours then?' Gethryn was wearing a somewhat sweet thing in
+brown and yellow.
+
+'Mine happens to be a First Eleven tie.'
+
+'Oh! Well, as a matter of fact, you know, I was going to take off my
+tie. I always do, especially at night. It's a sort of habit I've got
+into.'
+
+'Not quite so much of your beastly cheek, please,' said Gethryn.
+
+'Right-ho!' said Farnie cheerfully, and silence, broken only by the
+shrieking of the cab wheels, brooded once more over the cab. Then
+Gethryn, feeling that perhaps it would be a shame to jump too severely
+on a new boy on his first day at a large public school, began to think
+of something conciliatory to say. 'Look here,' he said, 'you'll get on
+all right at Beckford, I expect. You'll find Leicester's a fairly
+decent sort of House. Anyhow, you needn't be afraid you'll get bullied.
+There's none of that sort of thing at School nowadays.'
+
+'Really?'
+
+'Yes, and there's another thing I ought to warn you about. Have you
+brought much money with you?'
+
+''Bout fourteen pounds, I fancy,' said Farnie carelessly.
+
+'Fourteen _what_!' said the amazed Bishop. '_Pounds!_'
+
+'Or sovereigns,' said Farnie. 'Each worth twenty shillings, you know.'
+
+For a moment Gethryn's only feeling was one of unmixed envy. Previously
+he had considered himself passing rich on thirty shillings a term. He
+had heard legends, of course, of individuals who come to School
+bursting with bullion, but never before had he set eyes upon such an
+one. But after a time it began to dawn upon him that for a new boy at a
+public school, and especially at such a House as Leicester's had become
+under the rule of the late Reynolds and his predecessors, there might
+be such a thing as having too much money.
+
+'How the deuce did you get all that?' he asked.
+
+'My pater gave it me. He's absolutely cracked on the subject of
+pocket-money. Sometimes he doesn't give me a sou, and sometimes he'll
+give me whatever I ask for.'
+
+'But you don't mean to say you had the cheek to ask for fourteen quid?'
+
+'I asked for fifteen. Got it, too. I've spent a pound of it. I said I
+wanted to buy a bike. You can get a jolly good bike for five quid
+about, so you see I scoop ten pounds. What?'
+
+This ingenious, if slightly unscrupulous, feat gave Gethryn an insight
+into his uncle's character which up till now he had lacked. He began to
+see that the moral advice with which he had primed himself would be out
+of place. Evidently this youth could take quite good care of himself on
+his own account. Still, even a budding Professor Moriarty would be none
+the worse for being warned against Gethryn's _bete noire_, Monk,
+so the Bishop proceeded to deliver that warning.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'you seem to be able to look out for yourself all
+right, I must say. But there's one tip I really can give you. When you
+get to Leicester's, and a beast with a green complexion and an oily
+smile comes up and calls you "Old Cha-a-p", and wants you to swear
+eternal friendship, tell him it's not good enough. Squash him!'
+
+'Thanks,' said Farnie. 'Who is this genial merchant?'
+
+'Chap called Monk. You'll recognize him by the smell of scent. When you
+find the place smelling like an Eau-de-Cologne factory, you'll know
+Monk's somewhere near. Don't you have anything to do with him.'
+
+'You seem to dislike the gentleman.'
+
+'I bar the man. But that isn't why I'm giving you the tip to steer
+clear of him. There are dozens of chaps I bar who haven't an ounce of
+vice in them. And there are one or two chaps who have got tons. Monk's
+one of them. A fellow called Danvers is another. Also a beast of the
+name of Waterford. There are some others as well, but those are the
+worst of the lot. By the way, I forgot to ask, have you ever been to
+school before?'
+
+'Yes,' said Farnie, in the dreamy voice of one who recalls memories
+from the misty past, 'I was at Harrow before I came here, and at
+Wellington before I went to Harrow, and at Clifton before I went to
+Wellington.'
+
+Gethryn gasped.
+
+'Anywhere before you went to Clifton?' he enquired.
+
+'Only private schools.'
+
+The recollection of the platitudes which he had been delivering, under
+the impression that he was talking to an entirely raw beginner, made
+Gethryn feel slightly uncomfortable. What must this wanderer, who had
+seen men and cities, have thought of his harangue?
+
+'Why did you leave Harrow?' asked he.
+
+'Sacked,' was the laconic reply.
+
+Have you ever, asks a modern philosopher, gone upstairs in the dark,
+and trodden on the last step when it wasn't there? That sensation and
+the one Gethryn felt at this unexpected revelation were identical. And
+the worst of it was that he felt the keenest desire to know why Harrow
+had seen fit to dispense with the presence of his uncle.
+
+'Why?' he began. 'I mean,' he went on hurriedly, 'why did you leave
+Wellington?'
+
+'Sacked,' said Farnie again, with the monotonous persistence of a
+Solomon Eagle.
+
+Gethryn felt at this juncture much as the unfortunate gentleman in
+_Punch_ must have felt, when, having finished a humorous story,
+the point of which turned upon squinting and red noses, he suddenly
+discovered that his host enjoyed both those peculiarities. He struggled
+manfully with his feelings for a time. Tact urged him to discontinue
+his investigations and talk about the weather. Curiosity insisted upon
+knowing further details. Just as the struggle was at its height, Farnie
+came unexpectedly to the rescue.
+
+'It may interest you,' he said, 'to know that I was not sacked from
+Clifton.'
+
+Gethryn with some difficulty refrained from thanking him for the
+information.
+
+'I never stop at a school long,' said Farnie. 'If I don't get sacked my
+father takes me away after a couple of terms. I went to four private
+schools before I started on the public schools. My pater took me away
+from the first two because he thought the drains were bad, the third
+because they wouldn't teach me shorthand, and the fourth because he
+didn't like the headmaster's face. I worked off those schools in a year
+and a half.' Having finished this piece of autobiography, he relapsed
+into silence, leaving Gethryn to recollect various tales he had heard
+of his grandfather's eccentricity. The silence lasted until the College
+was reached, when the matron took charge of Farnie, and Gethryn went
+off to tell Marriott of these strange happenings.
+
+Marriott was amused, nor did he attempt to conceal the fact. When he
+had finished laughing, which was not for some time, he favoured the
+Bishop with a very sound piece of advice. 'If I were you,' he said, 'I
+should try and hush this affair up. It's all fearfully funny, but I
+think you'd enjoy life more if nobody knew this kid was your uncle. To
+see the head of the House going about with a juvenile uncle in his wake
+might amuse the chaps rather, and you might find it harder to keep
+order; I won't let it out, and nobody else knows apparently. Go and
+square the kid. Oh, I say though, what's his name? If it's Gethryn,
+you're done. Unless you like to swear he's a cousin.'
+
+'No; his name's Farnie, thank goodness.'
+
+'That's all right then. Go and talk to him.'
+
+Gethryn went to the junior study. Farnie was holding forth to a knot of
+fags at one end of the room. His audience appeared to be amused at
+something.
+
+'I say, Farnie,' said the Bishop, 'half a second.'
+
+Farnie came out, and Gethryn proceeded to inform him that, all things
+considered, and proud as he was of the relationship, it was not
+absolutely essential that he should tell everybody that he was his
+uncle. In fact, it would be rather better on the whole if he did not.
+Did he follow?
+
+Farnie begged to observe that he did follow, but that, to his sorrow,
+the warning came too late.
+
+'I'm very sorry,' he said, 'I hadn't the least idea you wanted the
+thing kept dark. How was I to know? I've just been telling it to some
+of the chaps in there. Awfully decent chaps. They seemed to think it
+rather funny. Anyhow, I'm not ashamed of the relationship. Not yet, at
+any rate.'
+
+For a moment Gethryn seemed about to speak. He looked fixedly at his
+uncle as he stood framed in the doorway, a cheerful column of cool,
+calm, concentrated cheek. Then, as if realizing that no words that he
+knew could do justice to the situation, he raised his foot in silence,
+and 'booted' his own flesh and blood with marked emphasis. After which
+ceremony he went, still without a word, upstairs again.
+
+As for Farnie, he returned to the junior day-room whistling 'Down
+South' in a soft but cheerful key, and solidified his growing
+popularity with doles of food from a hamper which he had brought with
+him. Finally, on retiring to bed and being pressed by the rest of his
+dormitory for a story, he embarked upon the history of a certain
+Pollock and an individual referred to throughout as the Porroh Man, the
+former of whom caused the latter to be decapitated, and was ever
+afterwards haunted by his head, which appeared to him all day and every
+day (not excepting Sundays and Bank Holidays) in an upside-down
+position and wearing a horrible grin. In the end Pollock very sensibly
+committed suicide (with ghastly details), and the dormitory thanked
+Farnie in a subdued and chastened manner, and tried, with small
+success, to go to sleep. In short, Farnie's first evening at Beckford
+had been quite a triumph.
+
+
+
+
+[4]
+
+PRINGLE MAKES A SPORTING OFFER
+
+
+Estimating it roughly, it takes a new boy at a public school about a
+week to find his legs and shed his skin of newness. The period is, of
+course, longer in the case of some and shorter in the case of others.
+Both Farnie and Wilson had made themselves at home immediately. In the
+case of the latter, directly the Skinner episode had been noised
+abroad, and it was discovered in addition that he was a promising bat,
+public opinion recognized that here was a youth out of the common run
+of new boys, and the Lower Fourth--the form in which he had been placed
+on arrival--took him to its bosom as an equal. Farnie's case was
+exceptional. A career at Harrow, Clifton, and Wellington, however short
+and abruptly terminated, gives one some sort of grip on the way public
+school life is conducted. At an early date, moreover, he gave signs of
+what almost amounted to genius in the Indoor Game department. Now,
+success in the field is a good thing, and undoubtedly makes for
+popularity. But if you desire to command the respect and admiration of
+your fellow-beings to a degree stretched almost to the point of
+idolatry, make yourself proficient in the art of whiling away the hours
+of afternoon school. Before Farnie's arrival, his form, the Upper
+Fourth, with the best intentions in the world, had not been skilful
+'raggers'. They had ragged in an intermittent, once-a-week sort of way.
+When, however, he came on the scene, he introduced a welcome element of
+science into the sport. As witness the following. Mr Strudwick, the
+regular master of the form, happened on one occasion to be away for a
+couple of days, and a stop-gap was put in in his place. The name of the
+stop-gap was Mr Somerville Smith. He and Farnie exchanged an unspoken
+declaration of war almost immediately. The first round went in Mr
+Smith's favour. He contrived to catch Farnie in the act of performing
+some ingenious breach of the peace, and, it being a Wednesday and a
+half-holiday, sent him into extra lesson. On the following morning,
+more by design than accident, Farnie upset an inkpot. Mr Smith observed
+icily that unless the stain was wiped away before the beginning of
+afternoon school, there would be trouble. Farnie observed (to himself)
+that there would be trouble in any case, for he had hit upon the
+central idea for the most colossal 'rag' that, in his opinion, ever
+was. After morning school he gathered the form around him, and
+disclosed his idea. The floor of the form-room, he pointed out, was
+some dozen inches below the level of the door. Would it not be a
+pleasant and profitable notion, he asked, to flood the floor with water
+to the depth of those dozen inches? On the wall outside the form-room
+hung a row of buckets, placed there in case of fire, and the lavatory
+was not too far off for practical purposes. Mr Smith had bidden him
+wash the floor. It was obviously his duty to do so. The form thought so
+too. For a solid hour, thirty weary but enthusiastic reprobates
+laboured without ceasing, and by the time the bell rang all was
+prepared. The floor was one still, silent pool. Two caps and a few
+notebooks floated sluggishly on the surface, relieving the picture of
+any tendency to monotony. The form crept silently to their places along
+the desks. As Mr Smith's footsteps were heard approaching, they began
+to beat vigorously upon the desks, with the result that Mr Smith,
+quickening his pace, dashed into the form-room at a hard gallop. The
+immediate results were absolutely satisfactory, and if matters
+subsequently (when Mr Smith, having changed his clothes, returned with
+the Headmaster) did get somewhat warm for the thirty criminals, they
+had the satisfying feeling that their duty had been done, and a hearty
+and unanimous vote of thanks was passed to Farnie. From which it will
+be seen that Master Reginald Farnie was managing to extract more or
+less enjoyment out of his life at Beckford.
+
+Another person who was enjoying life was Pringle of the School House.
+The keynote of Pringle's character was superiority. At an early period
+of his life--he was still unable to speak at the time--his grandmother
+had died. This is probably the sole reason why he had never taught that
+relative to suck eggs. Had she lived, her education in that direction
+must have been taken in hand. Baffled in this, Pringle had turned his
+attention to the rest of the human race. He had a rooted conviction
+that he did everything a shade better than anybody else. This belief
+did not make him arrogant at all, and certainly not offensive, for he
+was exceedingly popular in the School. But still there were people who
+thought that he might occasionally draw the line somewhere. Watson, the
+ground-man, for example, thought so when Pringle primed him with advice
+on the subject of preparing a wicket. And Langdale, who had been
+captain of the team five years before, had thought so most decidedly,
+and had not hesitated to say so when Pringle, then in his first term
+and aged twelve, had stood behind the First Eleven net and requested
+him peremptorily to 'keep 'em down, sir, keep 'em down'. Indeed, the
+great man had very nearly had a fit on that occasion, and was wont
+afterwards to attribute to the effects of the shock so received a
+sequence of three 'ducks' which befell him in the next three matches.
+
+In short, in every department of life, Pringle's advice was always (and
+generally unsought) at everybody's disposal. To round the position off
+neatly, it would be necessary to picture him as a total failure in the
+practical side of all the subjects in which he was so brilliant a
+theorist. Strangely enough, however, this was not the case. There were
+few better bats in the School than Pringle. Norris on his day was more
+stylish, and Marriott not infrequently made more runs, but for
+consistency Pringle was unrivalled.
+
+That was partly the reason why at this time he was feeling pleased with
+life. The School had played three matches up to date, and had won them
+all. In the first, an Oxford college team, containing several Old
+Beckfordians, had been met and routed, Pringle contributing thirty-one
+to a total of three hundred odd. But Norris had made a century, which
+had rather diverted the public eye from this performance. Then the
+School had played the Emeriti, and had won again quite comfortably.
+This time his score had been forty-one, useful, but still not
+phenomenal. Then in the third match, _versus_ Charchester, one of
+the big school matches of the season, he had found himself. He ran up a
+hundred and twenty-three without a chance, and felt that life had
+little more to offer. That had been only a week ago, and the glow of
+satisfaction was still pleasantly warm.
+
+It was while he was gloating silently in his study over the bat with
+which a grateful Field Sports Committee had presented him as a reward
+for this feat, that he became aware that Lorimer, his study companion,
+appeared to be in an entirely different frame of mind to his own.
+Lorimer was in the Upper Fifth, Pringle in the Remove. Lorimer sat at
+the study table gnawing a pen in a feverish manner that told of an
+overwrought soul. Twice he uttered sounds that were obviously sounds of
+anguish, half groans and half grunts. Pringle laid down his bat and
+decided to investigate.
+
+'What's up?' he asked.
+
+'This bally poem thing,' said Lorimer.
+
+'Poem? Oh, ah, I know.' Pringle had been in the Upper Fifth himself a
+year before, and he remembered that every summer term there descended
+upon that form a Bad Time in the shape of a poetry prize. A certain
+Indian potentate, the Rajah of Seltzerpore, had paid a visit to the
+school some years back, and had left behind him on his departure
+certain monies in the local bank, which were to be devoted to providing
+the Upper Fifth with an annual prize for the best poem on a subject to
+be selected by the Headmaster. Entrance was compulsory. The wily
+authorities knew very well that if it had not been, the entries for the
+prize would have been somewhat small. Why the Upper Fifth were so
+favoured in preference to the Sixth or Remove is doubtful. Possibly it
+was felt that, what with the Jones History, the Smith Latin Verse, the
+Robinson Latin Prose, and the De Vere Crespigny Greek Verse, and other
+trophies open only to members of the Remove and Sixth, those two forms
+had enough to keep them occupied as it was. At any rate, to the Upper
+Fifth the prize was given, and every year, three weeks after the
+commencement of the summer term, the Bad Time arrived.
+
+'Can't you get on?' asked Pringle.
+
+'No.'
+
+'What's the subject?'
+
+'Death of Dido.'
+
+'Something to be got out of that, surely.'
+
+'Wish you'd tell me what.'
+
+'Heap of things.'
+
+'Such as what? Can't see anything myself. I call it perfectly indecent
+dragging the good lady out of her well-earned tomb at this time of day.
+I've looked her up in the Dic. of Antiquities, and it appears that she
+committed suicide some years ago. Body-snatching, I call it. What do I
+want to know about her?'
+
+'What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?' murmured Pringle.
+
+'Hecuba?' said Lorimer, looking puzzled, 'What's Hecuba got to do with
+it?'
+
+'I was only quoting,' said Pringle, with gentle superiority.
+
+'Well, I wish instead of quoting rot you'd devote your energies to
+helping me with these beastly verses. How on earth shall I begin?'
+
+'You might adapt my quotation. "What's Dido got to do with me, or I to
+do with Dido?" I rather like that. Jam it down. Then you go on in a
+sort of rag-time metre. In the "Coon Drum-Major" style. Besides, you
+see, the beauty of it is that you administer a wholesome snub to the
+examiner right away. Makes him sit up at once. Put it down.'
+
+Lorimer bit off another quarter of an inch of his pen. 'You needn't be
+an ass,' he said shortly.
+
+'My dear chap,' said Pringle, enjoying himself immensely, 'what on
+earth is the good of my offering you suggestions if you won't take
+them?'
+
+Lorimer said nothing. He bit off another mouthful of penholder.
+
+'Well, anyway,' resumed Pringle. 'I can't see why you're so keen on the
+business. Put down anything. The beaks never make a fuss about these
+special exams.'
+
+'It isn't the beaks I care about,' said Lorimer in an injured tone of
+voice, as if someone had been insinuating that he had committed some
+crime, 'only my people are rather keen on my doing well in this exam.'
+
+'Why this exam, particularly?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know. My grandfather or someone was a bit of a pro at
+verse in his day, I believe, and they think it ought to run in the
+family.'
+
+Pringle examined the situation in all its aspects. 'Can't you get
+along?' he enquired at length.
+
+'Not an inch.'
+
+'Pity. I wish we could swop places.'
+
+'So do I for some things. To start with, I shouldn't mind having made
+that century of yours against Charchester.'
+
+Pringle beamed. The least hint that his fellow-man was taking him at
+his own valuation always made him happy.
+
+'Thanks,' he said. 'No, but what I meant was that I wished I was in for
+this poetry prize. I bet I could turn out a rattling good screed. Why,
+last year I almost got the prize. I sent in fearfully hot stuff.'
+
+'Think so?' said Lorimer doubtfully, in answer to the 'rattling good
+screed' passage of Pringle's speech. 'Well, I wish you'd have a shot.
+You might as well.'
+
+'What, really? How about the prize?'
+
+'Oh, hang the prize. We'll have to chance that.'
+
+'I thought you were keen on getting it.'
+
+'Oh, no. Second or third will do me all right, and satisfy my people.
+They only want to know for certain that I've got the poetic afflatus
+all right. Will you take it on?'
+
+'All right.'
+
+'Thanks, awfully.'
+
+'I say, Lorimer,' said Pringle after a pause.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'Are your people coming down for the O.B.s' match?'
+
+The Old Beckfordians' match was the great function of the Beckford
+cricket season. The Headmaster gave a garden-party. The School band
+played; the School choir sang; and sisters, cousins, aunts, and parents
+flocked to the School in platoons.
+
+'Yes, I think so,' said Lorimer. 'Why?'
+
+'Is your sister coming?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know.' A brother's utter lack of interest in his sister's
+actions is a weird and wonderful thing for an outsider to behold.
+
+'Well, look here, I wish you'd get her to come. We could give them tea
+in here, and have rather a good time, don't you think?'
+
+'All right. I'll make her come. Look here, Pringle, I believe you're
+rather gone on Mabel.'
+
+This was Lorimer's vulgar way.
+
+'Don't be an ass,' said Pringle, with a laugh which should have been
+careless, but was in reality merely feeble. 'She's quite a kid.'
+
+Miss Mabel Lorimer's exact age was fifteen. She had brown hair, blue
+eyes, and a smile which disclosed to view a dimple. There are worse
+things than a dimple. Distinctly so, indeed. When ladies of fifteen
+possess dimples, mere man becomes but as a piece of damp
+blotting-paper. Pringle was seventeen and a half, and consequently too
+old to take note of such frivolous attributes; but all the same he had
+a sort of vague, sketchy impression that it would be pleasanter to run
+up a lively century against the O.B.s with Miss Lorimer as a spectator
+than in her absence. He felt pleased that she was coming.
+
+'I say, about this poem,' said Lorimer, dismissing a subject which
+manifestly bored him, and returning to one which was of vital interest,
+'you're sure you can write fairly decent stuff? It's no good sending in
+stuff that'll turn the examiner's hair grey. Can you turn out something
+really decent?'
+
+Pringle said nothing. He smiled gently as who should observe, 'I and
+Shakespeare.'
+
+
+
+
+[5]
+
+FARNIE GETS INTO TROUBLE--
+
+
+It was perhaps only natural that Farnie, having been warned so strongly
+of the inadvisability of having anything to do with Monk, should for
+that very reason be attracted to him. Nobody ever wants to do anything
+except what they are not allowed to do. Otherwise there is no
+explaining the friendship that arose between them. Jack Monk was not an
+attractive individual. He had a slack mouth and a shifty eye, and his
+complexion was the sort which friends would have described as olive,
+enemies (with more truth) as dirty green. These defects would have
+mattered little, of course, in themselves. There's many a bilious
+countenance, so to speak, covers a warm heart. With Monk, however,
+appearances were not deceptive. He looked a bad lot, and he was one.
+
+It was on the second morning of term that the acquaintanceship began.
+Monk was coming downstairs from his study with Danvers, and Farnie was
+leaving the fags' day-room.
+
+'See that kid?' said Danvers. 'That's the chap I was telling you about.
+Gethryn's uncle, you know.'
+
+'Not really? Let's cultivate him. I say, old chap, don't walk so fast.'
+Farnie, rightly concluding that the remark was addressed to him, turned
+and waited, and the three strolled over to the School buildings
+together.
+
+They would have made an interesting study for the observer of human
+nature, the two seniors fancying that they had to deal with a small boy
+just arrived at his first school, and in the grip of that strange, lost
+feeling which attacks the best of new boys for a day or so after their
+arrival; and Farnie, on the other hand, watching every move, as
+perfectly composed and at home as a youth should be with the experience
+of three public schools to back him up.
+
+When they arrived at the School gates, Monk and Danvers turned to go in
+the direction of their form-room, the Remove, leaving Farnie at the
+door of the Upper Fourth. At this point a small comedy took place.
+Monk, after feeling hastily in his pockets, requested Danvers to lend
+him five shillings until next Saturday. Danvers knew this request of
+old, and he knew the answer that was expected of him. By replying that
+he was sorry, but he had not got the money, he gave Farnie, who was
+still standing at the door, his cue to offer to supply the deficiency.
+Most new boys--they had grasped this fact from experience--would have
+felt it an honour to oblige a senior with a small loan. As Farnie made
+no signs of doing what was expected of him, Monk was obliged to resort
+to the somewhat cruder course of applying for the loan in person. He
+applied. Farnie with the utmost willingness brought to light a handful
+of money, mostly gold. Monk's eye gleamed approval, and he stretched
+forth an itching palm. Danvers began to think that it would be rash to
+let a chance like this slip. Ordinarily the tacit agreement between the
+pair was that only one should borrow at a time, lest confidence should
+be destroyed in the victim. But here was surely an exception, a special
+case. With a young gentleman so obviously a man of coin as Farnie, the
+rule might well be broken for once.
+
+'While you're about it, Farnie, old man,' he said carelessly, 'you might
+let me have a bob or two if you don't mind. Five bob'll see me through
+to Saturday all right.'
+
+'Do you mean tomorrow?' enquired Farnie, looking up from his heap of
+gold.
+
+'No, Saturday week. Let you have it back by then at the latest. Make a
+point of it.'
+
+'How would a quid do?'
+
+'Ripping,' said Danvers ecstatically.
+
+'Same here,' assented Monk.
+
+'Then that's all right,' said Farnie briskly; 'I thought perhaps you
+mightn't have had enough. You've got a quid, I know, Monk, because I
+saw you haul one out at breakfast. And Danvers has got one too, because
+he offered to toss you for it in the study afterwards. And besides, I
+couldn't lend you anything in any case, because I've only got about
+fourteen quid myself.'
+
+With which parting shot he retired, wrapped in gentle thought, into his
+form-room; and from the noise which ensued immediately upon his
+arrival, the shrewd listener would have deduced, quite correctly, that
+he had organized and taken the leading part in a general rag.
+
+Monk and Danvers proceeded upon their way.
+
+'You got rather left there, old chap,' said Monk at length.
+
+'I like that,' replied the outraged Danvers. 'How about you, then? It
+seemed to me you got rather left, too.'
+
+Monk compromised.
+
+'Well, anyhow,' he said, 'we shan't get much out of that kid.'
+
+'Little beast,' said Danvers complainingly. And they went on into their
+form-room in silence.
+
+'I saw your young--er--relative in earnest conversation with friend
+Monk this morning,' said Marriott, later on in the day, to Gethryn; 'I
+thought you were going to give him the tip in that direction?'
+
+'So I did,' said the Bishop wearily; 'but I can't always be looking
+after the little brute. He only does it out of sheer cussedness,
+because I've told him not to. It stands to reason that he can't
+_like_ Monk.'
+
+'You remind me of the psalmist and the wicked man, surname unknown,'
+said Marriott. 'You _can't_ see the good side of Monk.'
+
+'There isn't one.'
+
+'No. He's only got two sides, a bad side and a worse side, which he
+sticks on on the strength of being fairly good at games. I wonder if
+he's going to get his First this season. He's not a bad bat.'
+
+'I don't think he will. He is a good bat, but there are heaps better in
+the place. I say, I think I shall give young Farnie the tip once more,
+and let him take it or leave it. What do you think?'
+
+'He'll leave it,' said Marriott, with conviction.
+
+Nor was he mistaken. Farnie listened with enthusiasm to his nephew's
+second excursus on the Monk topic, and, though he said nothing, was
+apparently convinced. On the following afternoon Monk, Danvers,
+Waterford, and he hired a boat and went up the river together. Gethryn
+and Marriott, steered by Wilson, who was rapidly developing into a
+useful coxswain, got an excellent view of them moored under the shade
+of a willow, drinking ginger-beer, and apparently on the best of terms
+with one another and the world in general. In a brief but moving speech
+the Bishop finally excommunicated his erring relative. 'For all I
+care,' he concluded, 'he can do what he likes in future. I shan't stop
+him.'
+
+'No,' said Marriott, 'I don't think you will.'
+
+For the first month of his school life Farnie behaved, except in his
+choice of companions, much like an ordinary junior. He played cricket
+moderately well, did his share of compulsory fielding at the First
+Eleven net, and went for frequent river excursions with Monk, Danvers,
+and the rest of the Mob.
+
+At first the other juniors of the House were inclined to resent this
+extending of the right hand of fellowship to owners of studies and
+Second Eleven men, and attempted to make Farnie see the sin and folly
+of his ways. But Nature had endowed that youth with a fund of vitriolic
+repartee. When Millett, one of Leicester's juniors, evolved some
+laborious sarcasm on the subject of Farnie's swell friends, Farnie, in
+a series of three remarks, reduced him, figuratively speaking, to a
+small and palpitating spot of grease. After that his actions came in
+for no further, or at any rate no outspoken comment.
+
+Given sixpence a week and no more, Farnie might have survived an entire
+term without breaking any serious School rule. But when, after buying a
+bicycle from Smith of Markham's, he found himself with eight pounds to
+his name in solid cash, and the means of getting far enough away from
+the neighbourhood of the School to be able to spend it much as he
+liked, he began to do strange and risky things in his spare time.
+
+The great obstacle to illicit enjoyment at Beckford was the four
+o'clock roll-call on half-holidays. There were other obstacles, such as
+half-holiday games and so forth, but these could be avoided by the
+exercise of a little judgement. The penalty for non-appearance at a
+half-holiday game was a fine of sixpence. Constant absence was likely
+in time to lead to a more or less thrilling interview with the captain
+of cricket, but a very occasional attendance was enough to stave off
+this disaster; and as for the sixpence, to a man of means like Farnie
+it was a mere nothing. It was a bad system, and it was a wonder, under
+the circumstances, how Beckford produced the elevens it did. But it was
+the system, and Farnie availed himself of it to the full.
+
+The obstacle of roll-call he managed also to surmount. Some reckless
+and penniless friend was generally willing, for a consideration, to
+answer his name for him. And so most Saturday afternoons would find
+Farnie leaving behind him the flannelled fools at their various
+wickets, and speeding out into the country on his bicycle in the
+direction of the village of Biddlehampton, where mine host of the 'Cow
+and Cornflower', in addition to other refreshment for man and beast,
+advertised that ping-pong and billiards might be played on the
+premises. It was not the former of these games that attracted Farnie.
+He was no pinger. Nor was he a pongster. But for billiards he had a
+decided taste, a genuine taste, not the pumped-up affectation sometimes
+displayed by boys of his age. Considering his age he was a remarkable
+player. Later on in life it appeared likely that he would have the
+choice of three professions open to him, namely, professional billiard
+player, billiard marker, and billiard sharp. At each of the three he
+showed distinct promise. He was not 'lured to the green cloth' by Monk
+or Danvers. Indeed, if there had been any luring to be done, it is
+probable that he would have done it, and not they. Neither Monk nor
+Danvers was in his confidence in the matter. Billiards is not a cheap
+amusement. By the end of his sixth week Farnie was reduced to a single
+pound, a sum which, for one of his tastes, was practically poverty. And
+just at the moment when he was least able to bear up against it, Fate
+dealt him one of its nastiest blows. He was playing a fifty up against
+a friendly but unskilful farmer at the 'Cow and Cornflower'. 'Better
+look out,' he said, as his opponent effected a somewhat rustic stroke,
+'you'll be cutting the cloth in a second.' The farmer grunted, missed
+by inches, and retired, leaving the red ball in the jaws of the pocket,
+and Farnie with three to make to win.
+
+It was an absurdly easy stroke, and the Bishop's uncle took it with an
+absurd amount of conceit and carelessness. Hardly troubling to aim, he
+struck his ball. The cue slid off in one direction, the ball rolled
+sluggishly in another. And when the cue had finished its run, the
+smooth green surface of the table was marred by a jagged and unsightly
+cut. There was another young man gone wrong!
+
+To say that the farmer laughed would be to express the matter feebly.
+That his young opponent, who had been irritating him unspeakably since
+the beginning of the game with advice and criticism, should have done
+exactly what he had cautioned him, the farmer, against a moment before,
+struck him as being the finest example of poetic justice he had ever
+heard of, and he signalized his appreciation of the same by nearly
+dying of apoplexy.
+
+The marker expressed an opinion that Farnie had been and gone and done
+it.
+
+''Ere,' he said, inserting a finger in the cut to display its
+dimensions. 'Look 'ere. This'll mean a noo cloth, young feller me lad.
+That's wot this'll mean. That'll be three pound we will trouble you
+for, if _you_ please.'
+
+Farnie produced his sole remaining sovereign.
+
+'All I've got,' he said. 'I'll leave my name and address.'
+
+'Don't you trouble, young feller me lad,' said the marker, who appeared
+to be a very aggressive and unpleasant sort of character altogether,
+with meaning, 'I know yer name and I knows yer address. Today fortnight
+at the very latest, if _you_ please. You don't want me to 'ave to
+go to your master about it, now, do yer? What say? No. Ve' well then.
+Today fortnight is the time, and you remember it.'
+
+What was left of Farnie then rode slowly back to Beckford. Why he went
+to Monk on his return probably he could not have explained himself. But
+he did go, and, having told his story in full, wound up by asking for a
+loan of two pounds. Monk's first impulse was to refer him back to a
+previous interview, when matters had been the other way about, that
+small affair of the pound on the second morning of the term. Then there
+flashed across his mind certain reasons against this move. At present
+Farnie's attitude towards him was unpleasantly independent. He made him
+understand that he went about with him from choice, and that there was
+to be nothing of the patron and dependant about their alliance. If he
+were to lend him the two pounds now, things would alter. And to have
+got a complete hold over Master Reginald Farnie, Monk would have paid
+more than two pounds. Farnie had the intelligence to carry through
+anything, however risky, and there were many things which Monk would
+have liked to do, but, owing to the risks involved, shirked doing for
+himself. Besides, he happened to be in funds just now.
+
+'Well, look here, old chap,' he said, 'let's have strict business
+between friends. If you'll pay me back four quid at the end of term,
+you shall have the two pounds. How does that strike you?'
+
+It struck Farnie, as it would have struck most people, that if this was
+Monk's idea of strict business, there were the makings of no ordinary
+financier in him. But to get his two pounds he would have agreed to
+anything. And the end of term seemed a long way off.
+
+The awkward part of the billiard-playing episode was that the
+punishment for it, if detected, was not expulsion, but flogging. And
+Farnie resembled the lady in _The Ingoldsby Legends_ who 'didn't
+mind death, but who couldn't stand pinching'. He didn't mind
+expulsion--he was used to it, but he could _not_ stand flogging.
+
+'That'll be all right,' he said. And the money changed hands.
+
+
+
+
+[6]
+
+--AND STAYS THERE
+
+
+'I say,' said Baker of Jephson's excitedly some days later, reeling
+into the study which he shared with Norris, '_have_ you seen the
+team the M.C.C.'s bringing down?'
+
+At nearly every school there is a type of youth who asks this question
+on the morning of the M.C.C. match. Norris was engaged in putting the
+finishing touches to a snow-white pair of cricket boots.
+
+'No. Hullo, where did you raise that Sporter? Let's have a look.'
+
+But Baker proposed to conduct this business in person. It is ten times
+more pleasant to administer a series of shocks to a friend than to sit
+by and watch him administering them to himself. He retained _The
+Sportsman_, and began to read out the team.
+
+'Thought Middlesex had a match,' said Norris, as Baker paused
+dramatically to let the name of a world-famed professional sink in.
+
+'No. They don't play Surrey till Monday.'
+
+'Well, if they've got an important match like Surrey on on Monday,'
+said Norris disgustedly, 'what on earth do they let their best man come
+down here today for, and fag himself out?'
+
+Baker suggested gently that if anybody was going to be fagged out at
+the end of the day, it would in all probability be the Beckford
+bowlers, and not a man who, as he was careful to point out, had run up
+a century a mere three days ago against Yorkshire, and who was
+apparently at that moment at the very top of his form.
+
+'Well,' said Norris, 'he might crock himself or anything. Rank bad
+policy, I call it. Anybody else?'
+
+Baker resumed his reading. A string of unknowns ended in another
+celebrity.
+
+'Blackwell?' said Norris. 'Not O. T. Blackwell?'
+
+'It says A. T. But,' went on Baker, brightening up again, 'they always
+get the initials wrong in the papers. Certain to be O. T. By the way, I
+suppose you saw that he made eighty-three against Notts the other day?'
+
+Norris tried to comfort himself by observing that Notts couldn't bowl
+for toffee.
+
+'Last week, too,' said Baker, 'he made a hundred and forty-six not out
+against Malvern for the Gentlemen of Warwickshire. They couldn't get
+him out,' he concluded with unction. In spite of the fact that he
+himself was playing in the match today, and might under the
+circumstances reasonably look forward to a considerable dose of
+leather-hunting, the task of announcing the bad news to Norris appeared
+to have a most elevating effect on his spirits:
+
+'That's nothing extra special,' said Norris, in answer to the last item
+of information, 'the Malvern wicket's like a billiard-table.'
+
+'Our wickets aren't bad either at this time of year,' said Baker, 'and
+I heard rumours that they had got a record one ready for this match.'
+
+'It seems to me,' said Norris, 'that what I'd better do if we want to
+bat at all today is to win the toss. Though Sammy and the Bishop and
+Baynes ought to be able to get any ordinary side out all right.'
+
+'Only this isn't an ordinary side. It's a sort of improved county
+team.'
+
+'They've got about four men who might come off, but the M.C.C.
+sometimes have a bit of a tail. We ought to have a look in if we win
+the toss.'
+
+'Hope so,' said Baker. 'I doubt it, though.'
+
+At a quarter to eleven the School always went out in a body to inspect
+the pitch. After the wicket had been described by experts in hushed
+whispers as looking pretty good, the bell rang, and all who were not
+playing for the team, with the exception of the lucky individual who
+had obtained for himself the post of scorer, strolled back towards the
+blocks. Monk had come out with Waterford, but seeing Farnie ahead and
+walking alone he quitted Waterford, and attached himself to the genial
+Reginald. He wanted to talk business. He had not found the speculation
+of the two pounds a very profitable one. He had advanced the money
+under the impression that Farnie, by accepting it, was practically
+selling his independence. And there were certain matters in which Monk
+was largely interested, connected with the breaking of bounds and the
+purchase of contraband goods, which he would have been exceedingly glad
+to have performed by deputy. He had fancied that Farnie would have
+taken over these jobs as part of his debt. But he had mistaken his man.
+On the very first occasion when he had attempted to put on the screw,
+Farnie had flatly refused to have anything to do with what he proposed.
+He said that he was not Monk's fag--a remark which had the merit of
+being absolutely true.
+
+All this, combined with a slight sinking of his own funds, induced Monk
+to take steps towards recovering the loan.
+
+'I say, Farnie, old chap.'
+
+'Hullo!'
+
+'I say, do you remember my lending you two quid some time ago?'
+
+'You don't give me much chance of forgetting it,' said Farnie.
+
+Monk smiled. He could afford to be generous towards such witticisms.
+
+'I want it back,' he said.
+
+'All right. You'll get it at the end of term.'
+
+'I want it now.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Awfully hard up, old chap.'
+
+'You aren't,' said Farnie. 'You've got three pounds twelve and sixpence
+half-penny. If you will keep counting your money in public, you can't
+blame a chap for knowing how much you've got.'
+
+Monk, slightly disconcerted, changed his plan of action. He abandoned
+skirmishing tactics.
+
+'Never mind that,' he said, 'the point is that I want that four pounds.
+I'm going to have it, too.'
+
+'I know. At the end of term.'
+
+'I'm going to have it now.'
+
+'You can have a pound of it now.'
+
+'Not enough.'
+
+'I don't see how you expect me to raise any more. If I could, do you
+think I should have borrowed it? You might chuck rotting for a change.'
+
+'Now, look here, old chap,' said Monk, 'I should think you'd rather
+raise that tin somehow than have it get about that you'd been playing
+pills at some pub out of bounds. What?'
+
+Farnie, for one of the few occasions on record, was shaken out of his
+usual _sang-froid_. Even in his easy code of morality there had
+always been one crime which was an anathema, the sort of thing no
+fellow could think of doing. But it was obviously at this that Monk was
+hinting.
+
+'Good Lord, man,' he cried, 'you don't mean to say you're thinking of
+sneaking? Why, the fellows would boot you round the field. You couldn't
+stay in the place a week.'
+
+'There are heaps of ways,' said Monk, 'in which a thing can get about
+without anyone actually telling the beaks. At present I've not told a
+soul. But, you know, if I let it out to anyone they might tell someone
+else, and so on. And if everybody knows a thing, the beaks generally
+get hold of it sooner or later. You'd much better let me have that four
+quid, old chap.'
+
+Farnie capitulated.
+
+'All right,' he said, 'I'll get it somehow.'
+
+'Thanks awfully, old chap,' said Monk, 'so long!'
+
+In all Beckford there was only one person who was in the least degree
+likely to combine the two qualities necessary for the extraction of
+Farnie from his difficulties. These qualities were--in the first place
+ability, in the second place willingness to advance him, free of
+security, the four pounds he required. The person whom he had in his
+mind was Gethryn. He had reasoned the matter out step by step during
+the second half of morning school. Gethryn, though he had, as Farnie
+knew, no overwhelming amount of affection for his uncle, might in a
+case of great need prove blood to be thicker (as per advertisement)
+than water. But, he reflected, he must represent himself as in danger
+of expulsion rather than flogging. He had an uneasy idea that if the
+Bishop were to discover that all he stood to get was a flogging, he
+would remark with enthusiasm that, as far as he was concerned, the good
+work might go on. Expulsion was different. To save a member of his
+family from expulsion, he might think it worth while to pass round the
+hat amongst his wealthy acquaintances. If four plutocrats with four
+sovereigns were to combine, Farnie, by their united efforts, would be
+saved. And he rather liked the notion of being turned into a sort of
+limited liability company, like the Duke of Plaza Toro, at a pound a
+share. It seemed to add a certain dignity to his position.
+
+To Gethryn's study, therefore, he went directly school was over. If he
+had reflected, he might have known that he would not have been there
+while the match was going on. But his brain, fatigued with his recent
+calculations, had not noted this point.
+
+The study was empty.
+
+Most people, on finding themselves in a strange and empty room, are
+seized with a desire to explore the same, and observe from internal
+evidence what manner of man is the owner. Nowhere does character come
+out so clearly as in the decoration of one's private den. Many a man,
+at present respected by his associates, would stand forth unmasked at
+his true worth, could the world but look into his room. For there they
+would see that he was so lost to every sense of shame as to cover his
+books with brown paper, or deck his walls with oleographs presented
+with the Christmas numbers, both of which habits argue a frame of mind
+fit for murderers, stratagems, and spoils. Let no such man be trusted.
+
+The Bishop's study, which Farnie now proceeded to inspect, was not of
+this kind. It was a neat study, arranged with not a little taste. There
+were photographs of teams with the College arms on their plain oak
+frames, and photographs of relations in frames which tried to look, and
+for the most part succeeded in looking, as if they had not cost
+fourpence three farthings at a Christmas bargain sale. There were
+snap-shots of various moving incidents in the careers of the Bishop and
+his friends: Marriott, for example, as he appeared when carried to the
+Pavilion after that sensational century against the Authentics:
+Robertson of Blaker's winning the quarter mile: John Brown, Norris's
+predecessor in the captaincy, and one of the four best batsmen Beckford
+had ever had, batting at the nets: Norris taking a skier on the
+boundary in last year's M.C.C. match: the Bishop himself going out to
+bat in the Charchester match, and many more of the same sort.
+
+All these Farnie observed with considerable interest, but as he moved
+towards the book-shelf his eye was caught by an object more interesting
+still. It was a cash-box, simple and unornamental, but undoubtedly a
+cash-box, and as he took it up it rattled.
+
+The key was in the lock. In a boarding House at a public school it is
+not, as a general rule, absolutely necessary to keep one's valuables
+always hermetically sealed. The difference between _meum_ and
+_tuum_ is so very rarely confused by the occupants of such an
+establishment, that one is apt to grow careless, and every now and then
+accidents happen. An accident was about to happen now.
+
+It was at first without any motive except curiosity that Farnie opened
+the cash-box. He merely wished to see how much there was inside, with a
+view to ascertaining what his prospects of negotiating a loan with his
+relative were likely to be. When, however, he did see, other feelings
+began to take the place of curiosity. He counted the money. There were
+ten sovereigns, one half-sovereign, and a good deal of silver. One of
+the institutions at Beckford was a mission. The School by (more or
+less) voluntary contributions supported a species of home somewhere in
+the wilds of Kennington. No one knew exactly what or where this home
+was, but all paid their subscriptions as soon as possible in the term,
+and tried to forget about it. Gethryn collected not only for
+Leicester's House, but also for the Sixth Form, and was consequently,
+if only by proxy, a man of large means. _Too_ large, Farnie
+thought. Surely four pounds, to be paid back (probably) almost at once,
+would not be missed. Why shouldn't he--
+
+'Hullo!'
+
+Farnie spun round. Wilson was standing in the doorway.
+
+'Hullo, Farnie,' said he, 'what are you playing at in here?'
+
+'What are you?' retorted Farnie politely.
+
+'Come to fetch a book. Marriott said I might. What are you up to?'
+
+'Oh, shut up!' said Farnie. 'Why shouldn't I come here if I like?
+Matter of fact, I came to see Gethryn.'
+
+'He isn't here,' said Wilson luminously.
+
+'You don't mean to say you've noticed that already? You've got an eye
+like a hawk, Wilson. I was just taking a look round, if you really want
+to know.'
+
+'Well, I shouldn't advise you to let Marriott catch you mucking his
+study up. Seen a book called _Round the Red Lamp_? Oh, here it is.
+Coming over to the field?'
+
+'Not just yet. I want to have another look round. Don't you wait,
+though.'
+
+'Oh, all right.' And Wilson retired with his book.
+
+Now, though Wilson at present suspected nothing, not knowing of the
+existence of the cash-box, Farnie felt that when the money came to be
+missed, and inquiries were made as to who had been in the study, and
+when, he would recall the interview. Two courses, therefore, remained
+open to him. He could leave the money altogether, or he could take it
+and leave himself. In other words, run away.
+
+In the first case there would, of course, remain the chance that he
+might induce Gethryn to lend him the four pounds, but this had never
+been more than a forlorn hope; and in the light of the possibilities
+opened out by the cash-box, he thought no more of it. The real problem
+was, should he or should he not take the money from the cash-box?
+
+As he hesitated, the recollection of Monk's veiled threats came back to
+him, and he wavered no longer. He opened the box again, took out the
+contents, and dropped them into his pocket. While he was about it, he
+thought he might as well take all as only a part.
+
+Then he wrote two notes. One--to the Bishop--he placed on top of the
+cash-box; the other he placed with four sovereigns on the table in
+Monk's study. Finally he left the room, shut the door carefully behind
+him, and went to the yard at the back of the House, where he kept his
+bicycle.
+
+The workings of the human mind, and especially of the young human mind,
+are peculiar. It never occurred to Farnie that a result equally
+profitable to himself, and decidedly more convenient for all
+concerned--with the possible exception of Monk--might have been arrived
+at if he had simply left the money in the box, and run away without it.
+
+However, as the poet says, you can't think of everything.
+
+
+
+
+[7]
+
+THE BISHOP GOES FOR A RIDE
+
+
+The M.C.C. match opened auspiciously. Norris, for the first time that
+season, won the toss. Tom Brown, we read, in a similar position, 'with
+the usual liberality of young hands', put his opponents in first.
+Norris was not so liberal. He may have been young, but he was not so
+young as that. The sun was shining on as true a wicket as was ever
+prepared when he cried 'Heads', and the coin, after rolling for some
+time in diminishing circles, came to a standstill with the dragon
+undermost. And Norris returned to the Pavilion and informed his
+gratified team that, all things considered, he rather thought that they
+would bat, and he would be obliged if Baker would get on his pads and
+come in first with him.
+
+The M.C.C. men took the field--O. T. Blackwell, by the way, had shrunk
+into a mere brother of the century-making A. T.--and the two School
+House representatives followed them. An amateur of lengthy frame took
+the ball, a man of pace, to judge from the number of slips. Norris
+asked for 'two leg'. An obliging umpire informed him that he had got
+two leg. The long bowler requested short slip to stand finer, swung his
+arm as if to see that the machinery still worked, and dashed wildly
+towards the crease. The match had begun.
+
+There are few pleasanter or more thrilling moments in one's school
+career than the first over of a big match. Pleasant, that is to say, if
+you are actually looking on. To have to listen to a match being started
+from the interior of a form-room is, of course, maddening. You hear the
+sound of bat meeting ball, followed by distant clapping. Somebody has
+scored. But who and what? It may be a four, or it may be a mere single.
+More important still, it may be the other side batting after all. Some
+miscreant has possibly lifted your best bowler into the road. The
+suspense is awful. It ought to be a School rule that the captain of the
+team should send a message round the form-rooms stating briefly and
+lucidly the result of the toss. Then one would know where one was. As
+it is, the entire form is dependent on the man sitting under the
+window. The form-master turns to write on the blackboard. The only hope
+of the form shoots up like a rocket, gazes earnestly in the direction
+of the Pavilion, and falls back with a thud into his seat. 'They
+haven't started yet,' he informs the rest in a stage whisper.
+'Si-_lence_,' says the form-master, and the whole business must be
+gone through again, with the added disadvantage that the master now has
+his eye fixed coldly on the individual nearest the window, your only
+link with the outer world.
+
+Various masters have various methods under such circumstances. One more
+than excellent man used to close his book and remark, 'I think we'll
+make up a little party to watch this match.' And the form, gasping its
+thanks, crowded to the windows. Another, the exact antithesis of this
+great and good gentleman, on seeing a boy taking fitful glances through
+the window, would observe acidly, 'You are at perfect liberty, Jones,
+to watch the match if you care to, but if you do you will come in in
+the afternoon and make up the time you waste.' And as all that could be
+seen from that particular window was one of the umpires and a couple of
+fieldsmen, Jones would reluctantly elect to reserve himself, and for
+the present to turn his attention to Euripides again.
+
+If you are one of the team, and watch the match from the Pavilion, you
+escape these trials, but there are others. In the first few overs of a
+School match, every ball looks to the spectators like taking a wicket.
+The fiendish ingenuity of the slow bowler, and the lightning speed of
+the fast man at the other end, make one feel positively ill. When the
+first ten has gone up on the scoring-board matters begin to right
+themselves. Today ten went up quickly. The fast man's first ball was
+outside the off-stump and a half-volley, and Norris, whatever the state
+of his nerves at the time, never forgot his forward drive. Before the
+bowler had recovered his balance the ball was half-way to the ropes.
+The umpire waved a large hand towards the Pavilion. The bowler looked
+annoyed. And the School inside the form-rooms asked itself feverishly
+what had happened, and which side it was that was applauding.
+
+Having bowled his first ball too far up, the M.C.C. man, on the
+principle of anything for a change, now put in a very short one.
+Norris, a new man after that drive, steered it through the slips, and
+again the umpire waved his hand.
+
+The rest of the over was more quiet. The last ball went for four byes,
+and then it was Baker's turn to face the slow man. Baker was a steady,
+plodding bat. He played five balls gently to mid-on, and glanced the
+sixth for a single to leg. With the fast bowler, who had not yet got
+his length, he was more vigorous, and succeeded in cutting him twice
+for two.
+
+With thirty up for no wickets the School began to feel more
+comfortable. But at forty-three Baker was shattered by the man of pace,
+and retired with twenty to his credit. Gethryn came in next, but it was
+not to be his day out with the bat.
+
+The fast bowler, who was now bowling excellently, sent down one rather
+wide of the off-stump. The Bishop made most of his runs from off balls,
+and he had a go at this one. It was rising when he hit it, and it went
+off his bat like a flash. In a School match it would have been a
+boundary. But today there was unusual talent in the slips. The man from
+Middlesex darted forward and sideways. He took the ball one-handed two
+inches from the ground, and received the applause which followed the
+effort with a rather bored look, as if he were saying, 'My good sirs,
+_why_ make a fuss over these trifles!' The Bishop walked slowly
+back to the Pavilion, feeling that his luck was out, and Pringle came
+in.
+
+A boy of Pringle's character is exactly the right person to go in in an
+emergency like the present one. Two wickets had fallen in two balls,
+and the fast bowler was swelling visibly with determination to do the
+hat-trick. But Pringle never went in oppressed by the fear of getting
+out. He had a serene and boundless confidence in himself.
+
+The fast man tried a yorker. Pringle came down hard on it, and forced
+the ball past the bowler for a single. Then he and Norris settled down
+to a lengthy stand.
+
+'I do like seeing Pringle bat,' said Gosling. 'He always gives you the
+idea that he's doing you a personal favour by knocking your bowling
+about. Oh, well hit!'
+
+Pringle had cut a full-pitch from the slow bowler to the ropes.
+Marriott, who had been silent and apparently in pain for some minutes,
+now gave out the following homemade effort:
+
+    A dashing young sportsman named Pringle,
+      On breaking his duck (with a single),
+        Observed with a smile,
+        'Just notice my style,
+        How science with vigour I mingle.'
+
+'Little thing of my own,' he added, quoting England's greatest
+librettist. 'I call it "Heart Foam". I shall not publish it. Oh, run it
+out!'
+
+Both Pringle and Norris were evidently in form. Norris was now not far
+from his fifty, and Pringle looked as if he might make anything. The
+century went up, and a run later Norris off-drove the slow bowler's
+successor for three, reaching his fifty by the stroke.
+
+'Must be fairly warm work fielding today,' said Reece.
+
+'By Jove!' said Gethryn, 'I forgot. I left my white hat in the House.
+Any of you chaps like to fetch it?'
+
+There were no offers. Gethryn got up.
+
+'Marriott, you slacker, come over to the House.'
+
+'My good sir, I'm in next. Why don't you wait till the fellows come out
+of school and send a kid for it?'
+
+'He probably wouldn't know where to find it. I don't know where it is
+myself. No, I shall go, but there's no need to fag about it yet. Hullo!
+Norris is out.'
+
+Norris had stopped a straight one with his leg. He had made fifty-one
+in his best manner, and the School, leaving the form-rooms at the exact
+moment when the fatal ball was being bowled, were just in time to
+applaud him and realize what they had missed.
+
+Gethryn's desire for his hat was not so pressing as to make him deprive
+himself of the pleasure of seeing Marriott at the wickets. Marriott
+ought to do something special today. Unfortunately, after he had played
+out one over and hit two fours off it, the luncheon interval began.
+
+It was, therefore, not for half an hour that the Bishop went at last in
+search of the missing headgear. As luck would have it, the hat was on
+the table, so that whatever chance he might have had of overlooking the
+note which his uncle had left for him on the empty cash-box
+disappeared. The two things caught his eye simultaneously. He opened
+the note and read it. It is not necessary to transcribe the note in
+detail. It was no masterpiece of literary skill. But it had this merit,
+that it was not vague. Reading it, one grasped its meaning
+immediately.
+
+The Bishop's first feeling was that the bottom had dropped out of
+everything suddenly. Surprise was not the word. It was the arrival of
+the absolutely unexpected.
+
+Then he began to consider the position.
+
+Farnie must be brought back. That was plain. And he must be brought
+back at once, before anyone could get to hear of what had happened.
+Gethryn had the very strongest objections to his uncle, considered
+purely as a human being; but the fact remained that he was his uncle,
+and the Bishop had equally strong objections to any member of his
+family being mixed up in a business of this description.
+
+Having settled that point, he went on to the next. How was he to be
+brought back? He could not have gone far, for he could not have been
+gone much more than half an hour. Again, from his knowledge of his
+uncle's character, he deduced that he had in all probability not gone
+to the nearest station, Horton. At Horton one had to wait hours at a
+time for a train. Farnie must have made his way--on his
+bicycle--straight for the junction, Anfield, fifteen miles off by a
+good road. A train left Anfield for London at three-thirty. It was now
+a little past two. On a bicycle he could do it easily, and get back
+with his prize by about five, if he rode hard. In that case all would
+be well. Only three of the School wickets had fallen, and the pitch was
+playing as true as concrete. Besides, there was Pringle still in at one
+end, well set, and surely Marriott and Jennings and the rest of them
+would manage to stay in till five. They couldn't help it. All they had
+to do was to play forward to everything, and they must stop in. He
+himself had got out, it was true, but that was simply a regrettable
+accident. Not one man in a hundred would have caught that catch. No,
+with luck he ought easily to be able to do the distance and get back in
+time to go out with the rest of the team to field.
+
+He ran downstairs and out of the House. On his way to the bicycle-shed
+he stopped, and looked towards the field, part of which could be seen
+from where he stood. The match had begun again. The fast bowler was
+just commencing his run. He saw him tear up to the crease and deliver
+the ball. What happened then he could not see, owing to the trees which
+stood between him and the School grounds. But he heard the crack of
+ball meeting bat, and a great howl of applause went up from the
+invisible audience. A boundary, apparently. Yes, there was the umpire
+signalling it. Evidently a long stand was going to be made. He would
+have oceans of time for his ride. Norris wouldn't dream of declaring
+the innings closed before five o'clock at the earliest, and no bowler
+could take seven wickets in the time on such a pitch. He hauled his
+bicycle from the shed, and rode off at racing speed in the direction of
+Anfield.
+
+
+
+
+[8]
+
+THE M.C.C. MATCH
+
+
+But out in the field things were going badly with Beckford. The aspect
+of a game often changes considerably after lunch. For a while it looked
+as if Marriott and Pringle were in for their respective centuries. But
+Marriott was never a safe batsman.
+
+A hundred and fifty went up on the board off a square leg hit for two,
+which completed Pringle's half-century, and then Marriott faced the
+slow bowler, who had been put on again after lunch. The first ball was
+a miss-hit. It went behind point for a couple. The next he got fairly
+hold of and drove to the boundary. The third was a very simple-looking
+ball. Its sole merit appeared to be the fact that it was straight. Also
+it was a trifle shorter than it looked. Marriott jumped out, and got
+too much under it. Up it soared, straight over the bowler's head. A
+trifle more weight behind the hit, and it would have cleared the ropes.
+As it was, the man in the deep-field never looked like missing it. The
+batsmen had time to cross over before the ball arrived, but they did it
+without enthusiasm. The run was not likely to count. Nor did it.
+Deep-field caught it like a bird. Marriott had made twenty-two.
+
+And now occurred one of those rots which so often happen without any
+ostensible cause in the best regulated school elevens. Pringle played
+the three remaining balls of the over without mishap, but when it was
+the fast man's turn to bowl to Bruce, Marriott's successor, things
+began to happen. Bruce, temporarily insane, perhaps through
+nervousness, played back at a half-volley, and was clean bowled. Hill
+came in, and was caught two balls later at the wicket. And the last
+ball of the over sent Jennings's off-stump out of the ground, after
+that batsman had scored two.
+
+'I can always bowl like blazes after lunch,' said the fast man to
+Pringle. 'It's the lobster salad that does it, I think.' Four for a
+hundred and fifty-seven had changed to seven for a hundred and
+fifty-nine in the course of a single over. Gethryn's calculations, if
+he had only known, could have done now with a little revision.
+
+Gosling was the next man. He was followed, after a brief innings of
+three balls, which realized eight runs, by Baynes. Baynes, though
+abstaining from runs himself, helped Pringle to add three to the score,
+all in singles, and was then yorked by the slow man, who meanly and
+treacherously sent down, without the slightest warning, a very fast one
+on the leg stump. Then Reece came in for the last wicket, and the rot
+stopped. Reece always went in last for the School, and the School in
+consequence always felt that there were possibilities to the very end
+of the innings.
+
+The lot of a last-wicket man is somewhat trying. As at any moment his
+best innings may be nipped in the bud by the other man getting out, he
+generally feels that it is hardly worth while to play himself in before
+endeavouring to make runs. He therefore tries to score off every ball,
+and thinks himself lucky if he gets half a dozen. Reece, however, took
+life more seriously. He had made quite an art of last-wicket batting.
+Once, against the Butterflies, he had run up sixty not out, and there
+was always the chance that he would do the same again. Today, with
+Pringle at the other end, he looked forward to a pleasant hour or two
+at the wicket.
+
+No bowler ever looks on the last man quite in the same light as he does
+the other ten. He underrates him instinctively. The M.C.C. fast bowler
+was a man with an idea. His idea was that he could bowl a slow ball of
+diabolical ingenuity. As a rule, public feeling was against his trying
+the experiment. His captains were in the habit of enquiring rudely if
+he thought he was playing marbles. This was exactly what the M.C.C.
+captain asked on the present occasion, when the head ball sailed
+ponderously through the air, and was promptly hit by Reece into the
+Pavilion. The bowler grinned, and resumed his ordinary pace.
+
+But everything came alike to Reece. Pringle, too, continued his career
+of triumph. Gradually the score rose from a hundred and seventy to two
+hundred. Pringle cut and drove in all directions, with the air of a
+prince of the blood royal distributing largesse. The second century
+went up to the accompaniment of cheers.
+
+Then the slow bowler reaped his reward, for Pringle, after putting his
+first two balls over the screen, was caught on the boundary off the
+third. He had contributed eighty-one to a total of two hundred and
+thirteen.
+
+So far Gethryn's absence had not been noticed. But when the umpires had
+gone out, and the School were getting ready to take the field,
+inquiries were made.
+
+'You might begin at the top end, Gosling,' said Norris.
+
+'Right,' said Samuel. 'Who's going on at the other?'
+
+'Baynes. Hullo, where's Gethryn?'
+
+'Isn't he here? Perhaps he's in the Pavi--'
+
+'Any of you chaps seen Gethryn?'
+
+'He isn't in the Pav.,' said Baker. 'I've just come out of the First
+room myself, and he wasn't there. Shouldn't wonder if he's over at
+Leicester's.'
+
+'Dash the man,' said Norris, 'he might have known we'd be going out to
+field soon. Anyhow, we can't wait for him. We shall have to field a
+sub. till he turns up.'
+
+'Lorimer's in the Pav., changed,' said Pringle.
+
+'All right. He'll do.'
+
+And, reinforced by the gratified Lorimer, the team went on its way.
+
+In the beginning the fortunes of the School prospered. Gosling opened,
+as was his custom, at a tremendous pace, and seemed to trouble the
+first few batsmen considerably. A worried-looking little person who had
+fielded with immense zeal during the School innings at cover-point took
+the first ball. It was very fast, and hit him just under the knee-cap.
+The pain, in spite of the pad, appeared to be acute. The little man
+danced vigorously for some time, and then, with much diffidence,
+prepared himself for the second instalment.
+
+Now, when on the cricket field, the truculent Samuel was totally
+deficient in all the finer feelings, such as pity and charity. He could
+see that the batsman was in pain, and yet his second ball was faster
+than the first. It came in quickly from the off. The little batsman
+went forward in a hesitating, half-hearted manner, and played a clear
+two inches inside the ball. The off-stump shot out of the ground.
+
+'Bowled, Sammy,' said Norris from his place in the slips.
+
+The next man was a clergyman, a large man who suggested possibilities
+in the way of hitting. But Gosling was irresistible. For three balls
+the priest survived. But the last of the over, a fast yorker on the leg
+stump, was too much for him, and he retired.
+
+Two for none. The critic in the deck chair felt that the match was as
+good as over.
+
+But this idyllic state of things was not to last. The newcomer, a tall
+man with a light moustache, which he felt carefully after every ball,
+soon settled down. He proved to be a conversationalist. Until he had
+opened his account, which he did with a strong drive to the ropes, he
+was silent. When, however, he had seen the ball safely to the boundary,
+he turned to Reece and began.
+
+'Rather a nice one, that. Eh, what? Yes. Got it just on the right
+place, you know. Not a bad bat this, is it? What? Yes. One of Slogbury
+and Whangham's Sussex Spankers, don't you know. Chose it myself. Had it
+in pickle all the winter. Yes.'
+
+'Play, sir,' from the umpire.
+
+'Eh, what? Oh, right. Yes, good make these Sussex--_Spankers_. Oh,
+well fielded.'
+
+At the word spankers he had effected another drive, but Marriott at
+mid-off had stopped it prettily.
+
+Soon it began to occur to Norris that it would be advisable to have a
+change of bowling. Gosling was getting tired, and Baynes apparently
+offered no difficulties to the batsman on the perfect wicket, the
+conversational man in particular being very severe upon him. It was at
+such a crisis that the Bishop should have come in. He was Gosling's
+understudy. But where was he? The innings had been in progress over
+half an hour now, and still there were no signs of him. A man, thought
+Norris, who could cut off during the M.C.C. match (of all matches!),
+probably on some rotten business of his own, was beyond the pale, and
+must, on reappearance, be fallen upon and rent. He--here something
+small and red whizzed at his face. He put up his hands to protect
+himself. The ball struck them and bounded out again. When a fast bowler
+is bowling a slip he should not indulge in absent-mindedness. The
+conversational man had received his first life, and, as he was careful
+to explain to Reece, it was a curious thing, but whenever he was let
+off early in his innings he always made fifty, and as a rule a century.
+Gosling's analysis was spoilt, and the match in all probability lost.
+And Norris put it all down to Gethryn. If he had been there, this would
+not have happened.
+
+'Sorry, Gosling,' he said.
+
+'All right,' said Gosling, though thinking quite the reverse. And he
+walked back to bowl his next ball, conjuring up a beautiful vision in
+his mind. J. Douglas and Braund were fielding slip to him in the
+vision, while in the background Norris appeared, in a cauldron of
+boiling oil.
+
+'Tut, tut,' said Baker facetiously to the raging captain.
+
+Baker's was essentially a flippant mind. Not even a moment of solemn
+agony, such as this, was sacred to him.
+
+Norris was icy and severe.
+
+'If you want to rot about, Baker,' he said, 'perhaps you'd better go
+and play stump-cricket with the juniors.'
+
+'Well,' retorted Baker, with great politeness, 'I suppose seeing you
+miss a gaper like that right into your hands made me think I was
+playing stump-cricket with the juniors.'
+
+At this point the conversation ceased, Baker suddenly remembering that
+he had not yet received his First Eleven colours, and that it would
+therefore be rash to goad the captain too freely, while Norris, for his
+part, recalled the fact that Baker had promised to do some Latin verse
+for him that evening, and might, if crushed with some scathing
+repartee, refuse to go through with that contract. So there was silence
+in the slips.
+
+The partnership was broken at last by a lucky accident. The
+conversationalist called his partner for a short run, and when that
+unfortunate gentleman had sprinted some twenty yards, reconsidered the
+matter and sent him back. Reece had the bails off before the victim had
+completed a third of the return journey.
+
+For some time after this matters began to favour the School again. With
+the score at a hundred and five, three men left in two overs, one
+bowled by Gosling, the others caught at point and in the deep off
+Jennings, who had deposed Baynes. Six wickets were now down, and the
+enemy still over a hundred behind.
+
+But the M.C.C. in its school matches has this peculiarity. However
+badly it may seem to stand, there is always something up its sleeve. In
+this case it was a professional, a man indecently devoid of anything in
+the shape of nerves. He played the bowling with a stolid confidence,
+amounting almost to contempt, which struck a chill to the hearts of the
+School bowlers. It did worse. It induced them to bowl with the sole
+object of getting the conversationalist at the batting end, thus
+enabling the professional to pile up an unassuming but rapidly
+increasing score by means of threes and singles.
+
+As for the conversationalist, he had made thirty or more, and wanted
+all the bowling he could get.
+
+'It's a very curious thing,' he said to Reece, as he faced Gosling,
+after his partner had scored a three off the first ball of the over,
+'but some fellows simply detest fast bowling. Now I--' He never finished
+the sentence. When he spoke again it was to begin a new one.
+
+'How on earth did that happen?' he asked.
+
+'I think it bowled you,' said Reece stolidly, picking up the two stumps
+which had been uprooted by Gosling's express.
+
+'Yes. But how? Dash it! What? I can't underst--. Most curious thing I
+ever--dash it all, you know.'
+
+He drifted off in the direction of the Pavilion, stopping on the way to
+ask short leg his opinion of the matter.
+
+'Bowled, Sammy,' said Reece, putting on the bails.
+
+'Well bowled, Gosling,' growled Norris from the slips.
+
+'Sammy the marvel, by Jove,' said Marriott. 'Switch it on, Samuel, more
+and more.'
+
+'I wish Norris would give me a rest. Where on earth is that man
+Gethryn?'
+
+'Rum, isn't it? There's going to be something of a row about it. Norris
+seems to be getting rather shirty. Hullo! here comes the Deathless
+Author.'
+
+The author referred to was the new batsman, a distinguished novelist,
+who played a good deal for the M.C.C. He broke his journey to the
+wicket to speak to the conversationalist, who was still engaged with
+short leg.
+
+'Bates, old man,' he said, 'if you're going to the Pavilion you might
+wait for me. I shall be out in an hour or two.'
+
+Upon which Bates, awaking suddenly to the position of affairs, went on
+his way.
+
+With the arrival of the Deathless Author an unwelcome change came over
+the game. His cricket style resembled his literary style. Both were
+straightforward and vigorous. The first two balls he received from
+Gosling he drove hard past cover point to the ropes. Gosling, who had
+been bowling unchanged since the innings began, was naturally feeling a
+little tired. He was losing his length, and bowling more slowly than
+was his wont. Norris now gave him a rest for a few overs, Bruce going
+on with rather innocuous medium left-hand bowling. The professional
+continued to jog along slowly. The novelist hit. Everything seemed to
+come alike to him. Gosling resumed, but without effect, while at the
+other end bowler after bowler was tried. From a hundred and ten the
+score rose and rose, and still the two remained together. A hundred and
+ninety went up, and Norris in despair threw the ball to Marriott.
+
+'Here you are, Marriott,' he said, 'I'm afraid we shall have to try
+you.'
+
+'That's what I call really nicely expressed,' said Marriott to the
+umpire. 'Yes, over the wicket.'
+
+Marriott was a slow, 'House-match' sort of bowler. That is to say, in a
+House match he was quite likely to get wickets, but in a First Eleven
+match such an event was highly improbable. His bowling looked very
+subtle, and if the ball was allowed to touch the ground it occasionally
+broke quite a remarkable distance.
+
+The forlorn hope succeeded. The professional for the first time in his
+innings took a risk. He slashed at a very mild ball almost a wide on
+the off side. The ball touched the corner of the bat, and soared up in
+the direction of cover-point, where Pringle held it comfortably.
+
+'There you are,' said Marriott, 'when you put a really scientific
+bowler on you're bound to get a wicket. Why on earth didn't I go on
+before, Norris?'
+
+'You wait,' said Norris, 'there are five more balls of the over to
+come.'
+
+'Bad job for the batsman,' said Marriott.
+
+There had been time for a run before the ball reached Pringle, so that
+the novelist was now at the batting end. Marriott's next ball was not
+unlike his first, but it was straighter, and consequently easier to get
+at. The novelist hit it into the road. When it had been brought back he
+hit it into the road again. Marriott suggested that he had better have
+a man there.
+
+The fourth ball of the over was too wide to hit with any comfort, and
+the batsman let it alone. The fifth went for four to square leg, almost
+killing the umpire on its way, and the sixth soared in the old familiar
+manner into the road again. Marriott's over had yielded exactly
+twenty-two runs. Four to win and two wickets to fall.
+
+'I'll never read another of that man's books as long as I live,' said
+Marriott to Gosling, giving him the ball. 'You're our only hope, Sammy.
+Do go in and win.'
+
+The new batsman had the bowling. He snicked his first ball for a
+single, bringing the novelist to the fore again, and Samuel Wilberforce
+Gosling vowed a vow that he would dismiss that distinguished novelist.
+
+But the best intentions go for nothing when one's arm is feeling like
+lead. Of all the miserable balls sent down that afternoon that one of
+Gosling's was the worst. It was worse than anything of Marriott's. It
+flew sluggishly down the pitch well outside the leg stump. The novelist
+watched it come, and his eye gleamed. It was about to bounce for the
+second time when, with a pleased smile, the batsman stepped out. There
+was a loud, musical report, the note of a bat when it strikes the ball
+fairly on the driving spot.
+
+The man of letters shaded his eyes with his hand, and watched the ball
+diminish in the distance.
+
+'I rather think,' said he cheerfully, as a crash of glass told of its
+arrival at the Pavilion, 'that that does it.'
+
+He was perfectly right. It did.
+
+
+
+
+[9]
+
+THE BISHOP FINISHES HIS RIDE
+
+
+Gethryn had started on his ride handicapped by two things. He did not
+know his way after the first two miles, and the hedges at the roadside
+had just been clipped, leaving the roads covered with small thorns.
+
+It was the former of these circumstances that first made itself
+apparent. For two miles the road ran straight, but after that it was
+unexplored country. The Bishop, being in both cricket and football
+teams, had few opportunities for cycling. He always brought his machine
+to School, but he very seldom used it.
+
+At the beginning of the unexplored country, an irresponsible person
+recommended him to go straight on. He couldn't miss the road, said he.
+It was straight all the way. Gethryn thanked him, rode on, and having
+gone a mile came upon three roads, each of which might quite well have
+been considered a continuation of the road on which he was already. One
+curved gently off to the right, the other two equally gently to the
+left. He dismounted and the feelings of gratitude which he had borne
+towards his informant for his lucid directions vanished suddenly. He
+gazed searchingly at the three roads, but to single out one of them as
+straighter than the other two was a task that baffled him completely. A
+sign-post informed him of three things. By following road one he might
+get to Brindleham, and ultimately, if he persevered, to Corden. Road
+number two would lead him to Old Inns, whatever they might be, with the
+further inducement of Little Benbury, while if he cast in his lot with
+road three he might hope sooner or later to arrive at Much
+Middlefold-on-the-Hill, and Lesser Middlefold-in-the-Vale. But on the
+subject of Anfield and Anfield Junction the board was silent.
+
+Two courses lay open to him. Should he select a route at random, or
+wait for somebody to come and direct him? He waited. He went on
+waiting. He waited a considerable time, and at last, just as he was
+about to trust to luck, and make for Much Middlefold-on-the-Hill, a
+figure loomed in sight, a slow-moving man, who strolled down the Old
+Inns road at a pace which seemed to argue that he had plenty of time on
+his hands.
+
+'I say, can you tell me the way to Anfield, please?' said the Bishop as
+he came up.
+
+The man stopped, apparently rooted to the spot. He surveyed the Bishop
+with a glassy but determined stare from head to foot. Then he looked
+earnestly at the bicycle, and finally, in perfect silence, began to
+inspect the Bishop again.
+
+'Eh?' he said at length.
+
+'Can you tell me the way to Anfield?'
+
+'Anfield?'
+
+'Yes. How do I get there?'
+
+The man perpended, and when he replied did so after the style of the
+late and great Ollendorf.
+
+'Old Inns,' he said dreamily, waving a hand down the road by which he
+had come, 'be over there.'
+
+'Yes, yes, I know,' said Gethryn.
+
+'Was born at Old Inns, I was,' continued the man, warming to his
+subject. 'Lived there fifty-five years, I have. Yeou go straight down
+the road an' yeou cam t' Old Inns. Yes, that be the way t' Old Inns.'
+
+Gethryn nobly refrained from rending the speaker limb from limb.
+
+'I don't want to know the way to Old Inns,' he said desperately. 'Where
+I want to get is Anfield. Anfield, you know. Which way do I go?'
+
+'Anfield?' said the man. Then a brilliant flash of intelligence
+illumined his countenance. 'Whoy, Anfield be same road as Old Inns.
+Yeou go straight down the road, an'--'
+
+'Thanks very much,' said Gethryn, and without waiting for further
+revelations shot off in the direction indicated. A quarter of a mile
+farther he looked over his shoulder. The man was still there, gazing
+after him in a kind of trance.
+
+The Bishop passed through Old Inns with some way on his machine. He had
+much lost time to make up. A signpost bearing the legend 'Anfield four
+miles' told him that he was nearing his destination. The notice had
+changed to three miles and again to two, when suddenly he felt that
+jarring sensation which every cyclist knows. His back tyre was
+punctured. It was impossible to ride on. He got off and walked. He was
+still in his cricket clothes, and the fact that he had on spiked boots
+did not make walking any the easier. His progress was not rapid.
+
+Half an hour before his one wish had been to catch sight of a
+fellow-being. Now, when he would have preferred to have avoided his
+species, men seemed to spring up from nowhere, and every man of them
+had a remark to make or a question to ask about the punctured tyre.
+Reserve is not the leading characteristic of the average yokel.
+
+Gethryn, however, refused to be drawn into conversation on the subject.
+At last one, more determined than the rest, brought him to bay.
+
+'Hoy, mister, stop,' called a voice. Gethryn turned. A man was running
+up the road towards him.
+
+He arrived panting.
+
+'What's up?' said the Bishop.
+
+'You've got a puncture,' said the man, pointing an accusing finger at
+the flattened tyre.
+
+It was not worth while killing the brute. Probably he was acting from
+the best motives.
+
+'No,' said Gethryn wearily, 'it isn't a puncture. I always let the air
+out when I'm riding. It looks so much better, don't you think so? Why
+did they let you out? Good-bye.'
+
+And feeling a little more comfortable after this outburst, he wheeled
+his bicycle on into Anfield High Street.
+
+Minds in the village of Anfield worked with extraordinary rapidity. The
+first person of whom he asked the way to the Junction answered the
+riddle almost without thinking. He left his machine out in the road and
+went on to the platform. The first thing that caught his eye was the
+station clock with its hands pointing to five past four. And when he
+realized that, his uncle's train having left a clear half hour before,
+his labours had all been for nothing, the full bitterness of life came
+home to him.
+
+He was turning away from the station when he stopped. Something else
+had caught his eye. On a bench at the extreme end of the platform sat a
+youth. And a further scrutiny convinced the Bishop of the fact that the
+youth was none other than Master Reginald Farnie, late of Beckford, and
+shortly, or he would know the reason why, to be once more of Beckford.
+Other people besides himself, it appeared, could miss trains.
+
+Farnie was reading one of those halfpenny weeklies which--with a nerve
+which is the only creditable thing about them--call themselves comic.
+He did not see the Bishop until a shadow falling across his paper
+caused him to look up.
+
+It was not often that he found himself unequal to a situation. Monk in
+a recent conversation had taken him aback somewhat, but his feelings on
+that occasion were not to be compared with what he felt on seeing the
+one person whom he least desired to meet standing at his side. His jaw
+dropped limply, _Comic Blitherings_ fluttered to the ground.
+
+The Bishop was the first to speak. Indeed, if he had waited for Farnie
+to break the silence, he would have waited long.
+
+'Get up,' he said. Farnie got up.
+
+'Come on.' Farnie came.
+
+'Go and get your machine,' said Gethryn. 'Hurry up. And now you will
+jolly well come back to Beckford, you little beast.'
+
+But before that could be done there was Gethryn's back wheel to be
+mended. This took time. It was nearly half past four before they
+started.
+
+'Oh,' said Gethryn, as they were about to mount, 'there's that money. I
+was forgetting. Out with it.'
+
+Ten pounds had been the sum Farnie had taken from the study. Six was
+all he was able to restore. Gethryn enquired after the deficit.
+
+'I gave it to Monk,' said Farnie.
+
+To Gethryn, in his present frame of mind, the mere mention of Monk was
+sufficient to uncork the vials of his wrath.
+
+'What the blazes did you do that for? What's Monk got to do with it?'
+
+'He said he'd get me sacked if I didn't pay him,' whined Farnie.
+
+This was not strictly true. Monk had not said. He had hinted. And he
+had hinted at flogging, not expulsion.
+
+'Why?' pursued the Bishop. 'What had you and Monk been up to?'
+
+Farnie, using his out-of-bounds adventures as a foundation, worked up a
+highly artistic narrative of doings, which, if they had actually been
+performed, would certainly have entailed expulsion. He had judged
+Gethryn's character correctly. If the matter had been simply a case for
+a flogging, the Bishop would have stood aside and let the thing go on.
+Against the extreme penalty of School law he felt bound as a matter of
+family duty to shield his relative. And he saw a bad time coming for
+himself in the very near future. Either he must expose Farnie, which he
+had resolved not to do, or he must refuse to explain his absence from
+the M.C.C. match, for by now there was not the smallest chance of his
+being able to get back in time for the visitors' innings. As he rode on
+he tried to imagine what would happen in consequence of that desertion,
+and he could not do it. His crime was, so far as he knew, absolutely
+without precedent in the School history.
+
+As they passed the cricket field he saw that it was empty. Stumps were
+usually drawn early in the M.C.C. match if the issue of the game was
+out of doubt, as the Marylebone men had trains to catch. Evidently this
+had happened today. It might mean that the School had won easily--they
+had looked like making a big score when he had left the ground--in
+which case public opinion would be more lenient towards him. After a
+victory a school feels that all's well that ends well. But it might, on
+the other hand, mean quite the reverse.
+
+He put his machine up, and hurried to the study. Several boys, as he
+passed them, looked curiously at him, but none spoke to him.
+
+Marriott was in the study, reading a book. He was still in flannels,
+and looked as if he had begun to change but had thought better of it.
+As was actually the case.
+
+'Hullo,' he cried, as Gethryn appeared. 'Where the dickens have you
+been all the afternoon? What on earth did you go off like that for?'
+
+'I'm sorry, old chap,' said the Bishop, 'I can't tell you. I shan't be
+able to tell anyone.'
+
+'But, man! Try and realize what you've done. Do you grasp the fact that
+you've gone and got the School licked in the M.C.C. match, and that we
+haven't beaten the M.C.C. for about a dozen years, and that if you'd
+been there to bowl we should have walked over this time? Do try and
+grasp the thing.'
+
+'Did they win?'
+
+'Rather. By a wicket. Two wickets, I mean. We made 213. Your bowling
+would just have done it.'
+
+Gethryn sat down.
+
+'Oh Lord,' he said blankly, 'this is awful!'
+
+'But, look here, Bishop,' continued Marriott, 'this is all rot. You
+can't do a thing like this, and then refuse to offer any explanation,
+and expect things to go on just as usual.'
+
+'I don't,' said Gethryn. 'I know there's going to be a row, but I can't
+explain. You'll have to take me on trust.'
+
+'Oh, as far as I am concerned, it's all right,' said Marriott. 'I know
+you wouldn't be ass enough to do a thing like that without a jolly good
+reason. It's the other chaps I'm thinking about. You'll find it jolly
+hard to put Norris off, I'm afraid. He's most awfully sick about the
+match. He fielded badly, which always makes him shirty. Jephson, too.
+You'll have a bad time with Jephson. His one wish after the match was
+to have your gore and plenty of it. Nothing else would have pleased him
+a bit. And think of the chaps in the House, too. Just consider what a
+pull this gives Monk and his mob over you. The House'll want some
+looking after now, I fancy.'
+
+'And they'll get it,' said Gethryn. 'If Monk gives me any of his
+beastly cheek, I'll knock his head off.'
+
+But in spite of the consolation which such a prospect afforded him, he
+did not look forward with pleasure to the next day, when he would have
+to meet Norris and the rest. It would have been bad in any case. He did
+not care to think what would happen when he refused to offer the
+slightest explanation.
+
+
+
+
+[10]
+
+IN WHICH A CASE IS FULLY DISCUSSED
+
+
+Gethryn was right in thinking that the interviews would be unpleasant.
+They increased in unpleasantness in arithmetical progression, until
+they culminated finally in a terrific encounter with the justly
+outraged Norris.
+
+Reece was the first person to institute inquiries, and if everybody had
+resembled him, matters would not have been so bad for Gethryn. Reece
+possessed a perfect genius for minding his own business. The dialogue
+when they met was brief.
+
+'Hullo,' said Reece.
+
+'Hullo,' said the Bishop.
+
+'Where did you get to yesterday?' said Reece.
+
+'Oh, I had to go somewhere,' said the Bishop vaguely.
+
+'Oh? Pity. Wasn't a bad match.' And that was all the comment Reece made
+on the situation.
+
+Gethryn went over to the chapel that morning with an empty sinking
+feeling inside him. He was quite determined to offer no single word of
+explanation, and he felt that that made the prospect all the worse.
+There was a vast uncertainty in his mind as to what was going to
+happen. Nobody could actually do anything to him, of course. It would
+have been a decided relief to him if anybody had tried that line of
+action, for moments occur when the only thing that can adequately
+soothe the wounded spirit, is to hit straight from the shoulder at
+someone. The punching-ball is often found useful under these
+circumstances. As he was passing Jephson's House he nearly ran into
+somebody who was coming out.
+
+'Be firm, my moral pecker,' thought Gethryn, and braced himself up for
+conflict.
+
+'Well, Gethryn?' said Mr Jephson.
+
+The question 'Well?' especially when addressed by a master to a boy, is
+one of the few questions to which there is literally no answer. You can
+look sheepish, you can look defiant, or you can look surprised
+according to the state of your conscience. But anything in the way of
+verbal response is impossible.
+
+Gethryn attempted no verbal response.
+
+'Well, Gethryn,' went on Mr Jephson, 'was it pleasant up the river
+yesterday?'
+
+Mr Jephson always preferred the rapier of sarcasm to the bludgeon of
+abuse.
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Gethryn, 'very pleasant.' He did not mean to be
+massacred without a struggle.
+
+'What!' cried Mr Jephson. 'You actually mean to say that you did go up
+the river?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Then what do you mean?'
+
+'It is always pleasant up the river on a fine day,' said Gethryn.
+
+His opponent, to use a metaphor suitable to a cricket master, changed
+his action. He abandoned sarcasm and condescended to direct inquiry.
+
+'Where were you yesterday afternoon?' he said.
+
+The Bishop, like Mr Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., became at once the
+silent tomb.
+
+'Did you hear what I said, Gethryn?' (icily). 'Where were you yesterday
+afternoon?'
+
+'I can't say, sir.'
+
+These words may convey two meanings. They may imply ignorance, in which
+case the speaker should be led gently off to the nearest asylum. Or
+they may imply obstinacy. Mr Jephson decided that in the present case
+obstinacy lay at the root of the matter. He became icier than ever.
+
+'Very well, Gethryn,' he said, 'I shall report this to the Headmaster.'
+
+And Gethryn, feeling that the conference was at an end, proceeded on
+his way.
+
+After chapel there was Norris to be handled. Norris had been rather
+late for chapel that morning, and had no opportunity of speaking to the
+Bishop. But after the service was over, and the School streamed out of
+the building towards their respective houses, he waylaid him at the
+door, and demanded an explanation. The Bishop refused to give one.
+Norris, whose temper never had a chance of reaching its accustomed
+tranquillity until he had consumed some breakfast--he hated early
+morning chapel--raved. The Bishop was worried, but firm.
+
+'Then you mean to say--you don't mean to say--I mean, you don't intend
+to explain?' said Norris finally, working round for the twentieth time
+to his original text.
+
+'I can't explain.'
+
+'You won't, you mean.'
+
+'Yes. I'll apologize if you like, but I won't explain.'
+
+Norris felt the strain was becoming too much for him.
+
+'Apologize!' he moaned, addressing circumambient space. 'Apologize! A
+man cuts off in the middle of the M.C.C. match, loses us the game, and
+then comes back and offers to apologize.'
+
+'The offer's withdrawn,' put in Gethryn. 'Apologies and explanations
+are both off.' It was hopeless to try and be conciliatory under the
+circumstances. They did not admit of it.
+
+Norris glared.
+
+'I suppose,' he said, 'you don't expect to go on playing for the First
+after this? We can't keep a place open for you in the team on the off
+chance of your not having a previous engagement, you know.'
+
+'That's your affair,' said the Bishop, 'you're captain. Have you
+finished your address? Is there anything else you'd like to say?'
+
+Norris considered, and, as he went in at Jephson's gate, wound up with
+this Parthian shaft--
+
+'All I can say is that you're not fit to be at a public school. They
+ought to sack a chap for doing that sort of thing. If you'll take my
+advice, you'll leave.'
+
+About two hours afterwards Gethryn discovered a suitable retort, but,
+coming to the conclusion that better late than never does not apply to
+repartees, refrained from speaking it.
+
+It was Mr Jephson's usual custom to sally out after supper on Sunday
+evenings to smoke a pipe (or several pipes) with one of the other
+House-masters. On this particular evening he made for Robertson's,
+which was one of the four Houses on the opposite side of the School
+grounds. He could hardly have selected a better man to take his
+grievance to. Mr Robertson was a long, silent man with grizzled hair,
+and an eye that pierced like a gimlet. He had the enviable reputation
+of keeping the best order of any master in the School. He was also one
+of the most popular of the staff. This was all the more remarkable from
+the fact that he played no games.
+
+To him came Mr Jephson, primed to bursting point with his grievance.
+
+'Anything wrong, Jephson?' said Mr Robertson.
+
+'Wrong? I should just think there was. Did you happen to be looking at
+the match yesterday, Robertson?'
+
+Mr Robertson nodded.
+
+'I always watch School matches. Good match. Norris missed a bad catch
+in the slips. He was asleep.'
+
+Mr Jephson conceded the point. It was trivial.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'he should certainly have held it. But that's a mere
+detail. I want to talk about Gethryn. Do you know what he did
+yesterday? I never heard of such a thing in my life, never. Went off
+during the luncheon interval without a word, and never appeared again
+till lock-up. And now he refuses to offer any explanation whatever. I
+shall report the whole thing to Beckett. I told Gethryn so this
+morning.'
+
+'I shouldn't,' said Mr Robertson; 'I really think I shouldn't. Beckett
+finds the ordinary duties of a Headmaster quite sufficient for his
+needs. This business is not in his province at all.'
+
+'Not in his province? My dear sir, what is a headmaster for, if not to
+manage affairs of this sort?'
+
+Mr Robertson smiled in a sphinx-like manner, and answered, after the
+fashion of Socrates, with a question.
+
+'Let me ask you two things, Jephson. You must proceed gingerly. Now,
+firstly, it is a headmaster's business to punish any breach of school
+rules, is it not?'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'And school prefects do not attend roll-call, and have no restrictions
+placed upon them in the matter of bounds?'
+
+'No. Well?'
+
+'Then perhaps you'll tell me what School rule Gethryn has broken?' said
+Mr Robertson.
+
+'You see you can't,' he went on. 'Of course you can't. He has not
+broken any School rule. He is a prefect, and may do anything he likes
+with his spare time. He chooses to play cricket. Then he changes his
+mind and goes off to some unknown locality for some reason at present
+unexplained. It is all perfectly legal. Extremely quaint behaviour on
+his part, I admit, but thoroughly legal.'
+
+'Then nothing can be done,' exclaimed Mr Jephson blankly. 'But it's
+absurd. Something must be done. The thing can't be left as it is. It's
+preposterous!'
+
+'I should imagine,' said Mr Robertson, 'from what small knowledge I
+possess of the Human Boy, that matters will be made decidedly
+unpleasant for the criminal.'
+
+'Well, I know one thing; he won't play for the team again.'
+
+'There is something very refreshing about your logic, Jephson. Because
+a boy does not play in one match, you will not let him play in any of
+the others, though you admit his absence weakens the team. However, I
+suppose that is unavoidable. Mind you, I think it is a pity. Of course
+Gethryn has some explanation, if he would only favour us with it.
+Personally I think rather highly of Gethryn. So does poor old
+Leicester. He is the only Head-prefect Leicester has had for the last
+half-dozen years who knows even the rudiments of his business. But it's
+no use my preaching his virtues to you. You wouldn't listen. Take
+another cigar, and let's talk about the weather.'
+
+Mr Jephson took the proffered weed, and the conversation, though it did
+not turn upon the suggested topic, ceased to have anything to do with
+Gethryn.
+
+The general opinion of the School was dead against the Bishop. One or
+two of his friends still clung to a hope that explanations might come
+out, while there were also a few who always made a point of thinking
+differently from everybody else. Of this class was Pringle. On the
+Monday after the match he spent the best part of an hour of his
+valuable time reasoning on the subject with Lorimer. Lorimer's vote
+went with the majority. Although he had fielded for the Bishop, he was
+not, of course, being merely a substitute, allowed to bowl, as the
+Bishop had had his innings, and it had been particularly galling to him
+to feel that he might have saved the match, if it had only been
+possible for him to have played a larger part.
+
+'It's no good jawing about it,' he said, 'there isn't a word to say for
+the man. He hasn't a leg to stand on. Why, it would be bad enough in a
+House or form match even, but when it comes to first matches--!' Here
+words failed Lorimer.
+
+'Not at all,' said Pringle, unmoved. 'There are heaps of reasons, jolly
+good reasons, why he might have gone away.'
+
+'Such as?' said Lorimer.
+
+'Well, he might have been called away by a telegram, for instance.'
+
+'What rot! Why should he make such a mystery of it if that was all?'
+
+'He'd have explained all right if somebody had asked him properly. You
+get a chap like Norris, who, when he loses his hair, has got just about
+as much tact as a rhinoceros, going and ballyragging the man, and no
+wonder he won't say anything. I shouldn't myself.'
+
+'Well, go and talk to him decently, then. Let's see you do it, and I'll
+bet it won't make a bit of difference. What the chap has done is to go
+and get himself mixed up in some shady business somewhere. That's the
+only thing it can be.'
+
+'Rot,' said Pringle, 'the Bishop isn't that sort of chap.'
+
+'You can't tell. I say,' he broke off suddenly, 'have you done that
+poem yet?'
+
+Pringle started. He had not so much as begun that promised epic.
+
+'I--er--haven't quite finished it yet. I'm thinking it out, you know.
+Getting a sort of general grip of the thing.'
+
+'Oh. Well, I wish you'd buck up with it. It's got to go in tomorrow
+week.'
+
+'Tomorrow week. Tuesday the what? Twenty-second, isn't it? Right. I'll
+remember. Two days after the O.B.s' match. That'll fix it in my mind.
+By the way, your people are going to come down all right, aren't they?
+I mean, we shall have to be getting in supplies and so on.'
+
+'Yes. They'll be coming. There's plenty of time, though, to think of
+that. What you've got to do for the present is to keep your mind glued
+on the death of Dido.'
+
+'Rather,' said Pringle, 'I won't forget.'
+
+This was at six twenty-two p.m. By the time six-thirty boomed from the
+College clock-tower, Pringle was absorbing a thrilling work of fiction,
+and Dido, her death, and everything connected with her, had faded from
+his mind like a beautiful dream.
+
+
+
+
+[11]
+
+POETRY AND STUMP-CRICKET
+
+
+The Old Beckfordians' match came off in due season, and Pringle enjoyed
+it thoroughly. Though he only contributed a dozen in the first innings,
+he made up for this afterwards in the second, when the School had a
+hundred and twenty to get in just two hours. He went in first with
+Marriott, and they pulled the thing off and gave the School a ten
+wickets victory with eight minutes to spare. Pringle was in rare form.
+He made fifty-three, mainly off the bowling of a certain J.R. Smith,
+whose fag he had been in the old days. When at School, Smith had always
+been singularly aggressive towards Pringle, and the latter found that
+much pleasure was to be derived from hitting fours off his bowling.
+Subsequently he ate more strawberries and cream than were, strictly
+speaking, good for him, and did the honours at the study tea-party with
+the grace of a born host. And, as he had hoped, Miss Mabel Lorimer
+_did_ ask what that silver-plate was stuck on to that bat for.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that in the midst of these festivities such
+trivialities as Lorimer's poem found no place in his thoughts. It was
+not until the following day that he was reminded of it.
+
+That Sunday was a visiting Sunday. Visiting Sundays occurred three
+times a term, when everybody who had friends and relations in the
+neighbourhood was allowed to spend the day with them. Pringle on such
+occasions used to ride over to Biddlehampton, the scene of Farnie's
+adventures, on somebody else's bicycle, his destination being the
+residence of a certain Colonel Ashby, no relation, but a great friend
+of his father's.
+
+The gallant Colonel had, besides his other merits--which were
+numerous--the pleasant characteristic of leaving his guests to
+themselves. To be left to oneself under some circumstances is apt to be
+a drawback, but in this case there was never any lack of amusements.
+The only objection that Pringle ever found was that there was too much
+to do in the time. There was shooting, riding, fishing, and also
+stump-cricket. Given proper conditions, no game in existence yields to
+stump-cricket in the matter of excitement. A stable-yard makes the best
+pitch, for the walls stop all hits and you score solely by boundaries,
+one for every hit, two if it goes past the coach-room door, four to the
+end wall, and out if you send it over. It is perfect.
+
+There were two junior Ashbys, twins, aged sixteen. They went to school
+at Charchester, returning to the ancestral home for the weekend.
+Sometimes when Pringle came they would bring a school friend, in which
+case Pringle and he would play the twins. But as a rule the programme
+consisted of a series of five test matches, Charchester _versus_
+Beckford; and as Pringle was almost exactly twice as good as each of
+the twins taken individually, when they combined it made the sides very
+even, and the test matches were fought out with the most deadly
+keenness.
+
+After lunch the Colonel was in the habit of taking Pringle for a stroll
+in the grounds, to watch him smoke a cigar or two. On this Sunday the
+conversation during the walk, after beginning, as was right and proper,
+with cricket, turned to work.
+
+'Let me see,' said the Colonel, as Pringle finished the description of
+how point had almost got to the square cut which had given him his
+century against Charchester, 'you're out of the Upper Fifth now, aren't
+you? I always used to think you were going to be a fixture there. You
+are like your father in that way. I remember him at Rugby spending
+years on end in the same form. Couldn't get out of it. But you did get
+your remove, if I remember?'
+
+'Rather,' said Pringle, 'years ago. That's to say, last term. And I'm
+jolly glad I did, too.'
+
+His errant memory had returned to the poetry prize once more.
+
+'Oh,' said the Colonel, 'why is that?'
+
+Pringle explained the peculiar disadvantages that attended membership
+of the Upper Fifth during the summer term.
+
+'I don't think a man ought to be allowed to spend his money in these
+special prizes,' he concluded; 'at any rate they ought to be Sixth Form
+affairs. It's hard enough having to do the ordinary work and keep up
+your cricket at the same time.'
+
+'They are compulsory then?'
+
+'Yes. Swindle, I call it. The chap who shares my study at Beckford is
+in the Upper Fifth, and his hair's turning white under the strain. The
+worst of it is, too, that I've promised to help him, and I never seem
+to have any time to give to the thing. I could turn out a great poem if
+I had an hour or two to spare now and then.'
+
+'What's the subject?'
+
+'Death of Dido this year. They are always jolly keen on deaths. Last
+year it was Cato, and the year before Julius Caesar. They seem to have
+very morbid minds. I think they might try something cheerful for a
+change.'
+
+'Dido,' said the Colonel dreamily. 'Death of Dido. Where have I heard
+either a story or a poem or a riddle or something in some way connected
+with the death of Dido? It was years ago, but I distinctly remember
+having heard somebody mention the occurrence. Oh, well, it will come
+back presently, I dare say.'
+
+It did come back presently. The story was this. A friend of Colonel
+Ashby's--the one-time colonel of his regiment, to be exact--was an
+earnest student of everything in the literature of the country that
+dealt with Sport. This gentleman happened to read in a publisher's list
+one day that a limited edition of _The Dark Horse_, by a Mr Arthur
+James, was on sale, and might be purchased from the publisher by all
+who were willing to spend half a guinea to that end.
+
+'Well, old Matthews,' said the Colonel, 'sent off for this book.
+Thought it must be a sporting novel, don't you know. I shall never
+forget his disappointment when he opened the parcel. It turned out to
+be a collection of poems. _The Dark Horse, and Other Studies in the
+Tragic_, was its full title.'
+
+'Matthews never had a soul for poetry, good or bad. _The Dark
+Horse_ itself was about a knight in the Middle Ages, you know. Great
+nonsense it was, too. Matthews used to read me passages from time to
+time. When he gave up the regiment he left me the book as a farewell
+gift. He said I was the only man he knew who really sympathized with
+him in the affair. I've got it still. It's in the library somewhere, if
+you care to look at it. What recalled it to my mind was your mention of
+Dido. The second poem was about the death of Dido, as far as I can
+remember. I'm no judge of poetry, but it didn't strike me as being very
+good. At the same time, you might pick up a hint or two from it. It
+ought to be in one of the two lower shelves on the right of the door as
+you go in. Unless it has been taken away. That is not likely, though.
+We are not very enthusiastic poetry readers here.'
+
+Pringle thanked him for his information, and went back to the
+stable-yard, where he lost the fourth test match by sixteen runs, owing
+to preoccupation. You can't play a yorker on the leg-stump with a thin
+walking-stick if your mind is occupied elsewhere. And the leg-stump
+yorkers of James, the elder (by a minute) of the two Ashbys, were
+achieving a growing reputation in Charchester cricket circles.
+
+One ought never, thought Pringle, to despise the gifts which Fortune
+bestows on us. And this mention of an actual completed poem on the very
+subject which was in his mind was clearly a gift of Fortune. How much
+better it would be to read thoughtfully through this poem, and quarry
+out a set of verses from it suitable to Lorimer's needs, than to waste
+his brain-tissues in trying to evolve something original from his own
+inner consciousness. Pringle objected strongly to any unnecessary waste
+of his brain-tissues. Besides, the best poets borrowed. Virgil did it.
+Tennyson did it. Even Homer--we have it on the authority of Mr
+Kipling--when he smote his blooming lyre went and stole what he thought
+he might require. Why should Pringle of the School House refuse to
+follow in such illustrious footsteps?
+
+It was at this point that the guileful James delivered his insidious
+yorker, and the dull thud of the tennis ball on the board which served
+as the wicket told a listening world that Charchester had won the
+fourth test match, and that the scores were now two all.
+
+But Beckford's star was to ascend again. Pringle's mind was made up. He
+would read the printed poem that very night, and before retiring to
+rest he would have Lorimer's verses complete and ready to be sent in
+for judgement to the examiner. But for the present he would dismiss the
+matter from his mind, and devote himself to polishing off the
+Charchester champions in the fifth and final test match. And in this he
+was successful, for just as the bell rang, summoning the players in to
+a well-earned tea, a sweet forward drive from his walking-stick crashed
+against the end wall, and Beckford had won the rubber.
+
+'As the young batsman, undefeated to the last, reached the pavilion,'
+said Pringle, getting into his coat, 'a prolonged and deafening salvo
+of cheers greeted him. His twenty-three not out, compiled as it was
+against the finest bowling Charchester could produce, and on a wicket
+that was always treacherous (there's a brick loose at the top end), was
+an effort unique in its heroism.'
+
+'Oh, _come_ on,' said the defeated team.
+
+'If you have fluked a win,' said James, 'it's nothing much. Wait till
+next visiting Sunday.'
+
+And the teams went in to tea.
+
+In the programme which Pringle had mapped out for himself, he was to go
+to bed with his book at the highly respectable hour of ten, work till
+eleven, and then go to sleep. But programmes are notoriously subject to
+alterations. Pringle's was altered owing to a remark made immediately
+after dinner by John Ashby, who, desirous of retrieving the fallen
+fortunes of Charchester, offered to play Pringle a hundred up at
+billiards, giving him thirty. Now Pringle's ability in the realm of
+sport did not extend to billiards. But the human being who can hear
+unmoved a fellow human being offering him thirty start in a game of a
+hundred has yet to be born. He accepted the challenge, and permission
+to play having been granted by the powers that were, on the
+understanding that the cloth was not to be cut and as few cues broken
+as possible, the game began, James acting as marker.
+
+There are doubtless ways by which a game of a hundred up can be got
+through in less than two hours, but with Pringle and his opponent
+desire outran performance. When the highest break on either side is
+six, and the average break two, matters progress with more stateliness
+than speed. At last, when the hands of the clock both pointed to the
+figure eleven, Pringle, whose score had been at ninety-eight since
+half-past ten, found himself within two inches of his opponent's ball,
+which was tottering on the very edge of the pocket. He administered the
+_coup de grace_ with the air of a John Roberts, and retired
+triumphant; while the Charchester representatives pointed out that as
+their score was at seventy-four, they had really won a moral victory by
+four points. To which specious and unsportsmanlike piece of sophistry
+Pringle turned a deaf ear.
+
+It was now too late for any serious literary efforts. No bard can do
+without his sleep. Even Homer used to nod at times. So Pringle
+contented himself with reading through the poem, which consisted of
+some thirty lines, and copying the same down on a sheet of notepaper
+for future reference. After which he went to bed.
+
+In order to arrive at Beckford in time for morning school, he had to
+start from the house at eight o'clock punctually. This left little time
+for poetical lights. The consequence was that when Lorimer, on the
+following afternoon, demanded the poem as per contract, all that
+Pringle had to show was the copy which he had made of the poem in the
+book. There was a moment's suspense while Conscience and Sheer
+Wickedness fought the matter out inside him, and then Conscience, which
+had started on the encounter without enthusiasm, being obviously flabby
+and out of condition, threw up the sponge.
+
+'Here you are,' said Pringle, 'it's only a rough copy, but here it
+_is_.'
+
+Lorimer perused it hastily.
+
+'But, I say,' he observed in surprised and awestruck tones, 'this is
+rather good.'
+
+It seemed to strike him as quite a novel idea. 'Yes, not bad, is it?'
+
+'But it'll get the prize.'
+
+'Oh, we shall have to prevent that somehow.'
+
+He did not mention how, and Lorimer did not ask.
+
+'Well, anyhow,' said Lorimer, 'thanks awfully. I hope you've not fagged
+about it too much.'
+
+'Oh no,' said Pringle airily, 'rather not. It's been no trouble at
+all.'
+
+He thus, it will be noticed, concluded a painful and immoral scene by
+speaking perfect truth. A most gratifying reflection.
+
+
+
+
+[12]
+
+'WE, THE UNDERSIGNED--'
+
+
+Norris kept his word with regard to the Bishop's exclusion from the
+Eleven. The team which had beaten the O.B.s had not had the benefit of
+his assistance, Lorimer appearing in his stead. Lorimer was a fast
+right-hand bowler, deadly in House matches or on a very bad wicket. He
+was the mainstay of the Second Eleven attack, and in an ordinary year
+would have been certain of his First Eleven cap. This season, however,
+with Gosling, Baynes, and the Bishop, the School had been unusually
+strong, and Lorimer had had to wait.
+
+The non-appearance of his name on the notice-board came as no surprise
+to Gethryn. He had had the advantage of listening to Norris's views on
+the subject. But when Marriott grasped the facts of the case, he went
+to Norris and raved. Norris, as is right and proper in the captain of a
+School team when the wisdom of his actions is called into question,
+treated him with no respect whatever.
+
+'It's no good talking,' he said, when Marriott had finished a brisk
+opening speech, 'I know perfectly well what I'm doing.'
+
+'Then there's no excuse for you at all,' said Marriott. 'If you were
+mad or delirious I could understand it.'
+
+'Come and have an ice,' said Norris.
+
+'Ice!' snorted Marriott. 'What's the good of standing there babbling
+about ices! Do you know we haven't beaten the O.B.s for four years?'
+
+'We shall beat them this year.'
+
+'Not without Gethryn.'
+
+'We certainly shan't beat them with Gethryn, because he's not going to
+play. A chap who chooses the day of the M.C.C. match to go off for the
+afternoon, and then refuses to explain, can consider himself jolly well
+chucked until further notice. Feel ready for that ice yet?'
+
+'Don't be an ass.'
+
+'Well, if ever you do get any ice, take my tip and tie it carefully
+round your head in a handkerchief. Then perhaps you'll be able to see
+why Gethryn isn't playing against the O.B.s on Saturday.'
+
+And Marriott went off raging, and did not recover until late in the
+afternoon, when he made eighty-three in an hour for Leicester's House
+in a scratch game.
+
+There were only three of the eleven Houses whose occupants seriously
+expected to see the House cricket cup on the mantelpiece of their
+dining-room at the end of the season. These were the School House,
+Jephson's, and Leicester's. In view of Pringle's sensational feats
+throughout the term, the knowing ones thought that the cup would go to
+the School House, with Leicester's runners-up. The various members of
+the First Eleven were pretty evenly distributed throughout the three
+Houses. Leicester's had Gethryn, Reece, and Marriott. Jephson's relied
+on Norris, Bruce, and Baker. The School House trump card was Pringle,
+with Lorimer and Baynes to do the bowling, and Hill of the First Eleven
+and Kynaston and Langdale of the second to back him up in the batting
+department. Both the other First Eleven men were day boys.
+
+The presence of Gosling in any of the House elevens, however weak on
+paper, would have lent additional interest to the fight for the cup;
+for in House matches, where every team has more or less of a tail, one
+really good fast bowler can make a surprising amount of difference to a
+side.
+
+There was a great deal of interest in the School about the House cup.
+The keenest of all games at big schools are generally the House
+matches. When Beckford met Charchester or any of the four schools which
+it played at cricket and football, keenness reached its highest pitch.
+But next to these came the House matches.
+
+Now that he no longer played for the Eleven, the Bishop was able to
+give his whole mind to training the House team in the way it should go.
+Exclusion from the First Eleven meant also that he could no longer,
+unless possessed of an amount of _sang-froid_ so colossal as
+almost to amount to genius, put in an appearance at the First Eleven
+net. Under these circumstances Leicester's net summoned him. Like Mr
+Phil May's lady when she was ejected (with perfect justice) by a
+barman, he went somewhere where he would be respected. To the House,
+then, he devoted himself, and scratch games and before-breakfast
+field-outs became the order of the day.
+
+House fielding before breakfast is one of the things which cannot be
+classed under the head of the Lighter Side of Cricket. You get up in
+the small hours, dragged from a comfortable bed by some sportsman who,
+you feel, carries enthusiasm to a point where it ceases to be a virtue
+and becomes a nuisance. You get into flannels, and, still half asleep,
+stagger off to the field, where a hired ruffian hits you up catches
+which bite like serpents and sting like adders. From time to time he
+adds insult to injury by shouting 'get to 'em!', 'get to 'em!'--a
+remark which finds but one parallel in the language, the 'keep moving'
+of the football captain. Altogether there are many more pleasant
+occupations than early morning field-outs, and it requires a
+considerable amount of keenness to carry the victim through them
+without hopelessly souring his nature and causing him to foster
+uncharitable thoughts towards his House captain.
+
+J. Monk of Leicester's found this increased activity decidedly
+uncongenial. He had no real patriotism in him. He played cricket well,
+but he played entirely for himself.
+
+If, for instance, he happened to make fifty in a match--and it happened
+fairly frequently--he vastly preferred that the rest of the side should
+make ten between them than that there should be any more half-centuries
+on the score sheet, even at the expense of losing the match. It was not
+likely, therefore, that he would take kindly to this mortification of
+the flesh, the sole object of which was to make everybody as
+conspicuous as everybody else. Besides, in the matter of fielding he
+considered that he had nothing to learn, which, as Euclid would say,
+was absurd. Fielding is one of the things which is never perfect.
+
+Monk, moreover, had another reason for disliking the field-outs.
+Gethryn, as captain of the House team, was naturally master of the
+ceremonies, and Monk objected to Gethryn. For this dislike he had solid
+reasons. About a fortnight after the commencement of term, the Bishop,
+going downstairs from his study one afternoon, was aware of what
+appeared to be a species of free fight going on in the doorway of the
+senior day-room. The senior day-room was where the rowdy element of the
+House collected, the individuals who were too old to be fags, and too
+low down in the School to own studies.
+
+Under ordinary circumstances the Bishop would probably have passed on
+without investigating the matter. A head of a house hates above all
+things to get a name for not minding his own business in unimportant
+matters. Such a reputation tells against him when he has to put his
+foot down over big things. To have invaded the senior day-room and
+stopped a conventional senior day-room 'rag' would have been
+interfering with the most cherished rights of the citizens, the freedom
+which is the birthright of every Englishman, so to speak.
+
+But as he passed the door which had just shut with a bang behind the
+free fighters, he heard Monk's voice inside, and immediately afterwards
+the voice of Danvers, and he stopped. In the first place, he reasoned
+within himself, if Monk and Danvers were doing anything, it was
+probably something wrong, and ought to be stopped. Gethryn always had
+the feeling that it was his duty to go and see what Monk and Danvers
+were doing, and tell them they mustn't. He had a profound belief in
+their irreclaimable villainy. In the second place, having studies of
+their own, they had no business to be in the senior day-room at all. It
+was contrary to the etiquette of the House for a study man to enter the
+senior day-room, and as a rule the senior day-room resented it. As to
+all appearances they were not resenting it now, the obvious conclusion
+was that something was going on which ought to cease.
+
+The Bishop opened the door. Etiquette did not compel the head of the
+House to knock, the rule being that you knocked only at the doors of
+those senior to you in the House. He was consequently enabled to
+witness a tableau which, if warning had been received of his coming,
+would possibly have broken up before he entered. In the centre of the
+group was Wilson, leaning over the study table, not so much as if he
+liked so leaning as because he was held in that position by Danvers. In
+the background stood Monk, armed with a walking-stick. Round the walls
+were various ornaments of the senior day-room in attitudes of expectant
+attention, being evidently content to play the part of 'friends and
+retainers', leaving the leading parts in the hands of Monk and his
+colleague.
+
+'Hullo,' said the Bishop, 'what's going on?'
+
+'It's all right, old chap,' said Monk, grinning genially, 'we're only
+having an execution.'
+
+'What's the row?' said the Bishop. 'What's Wilson been doing?'
+
+'Nothing,' broke in that youth, who had wriggled free from Danvers's
+clutches. 'I haven't done a thing, Gethryn. These beasts lugged me out
+of the junior day-room without saying what for or anything.'
+
+The Bishop began to look dangerous. This had all the outward aspect of
+a case of bullying. Under Reynolds's leadership Leicester's had gone in
+rather extensively for bullying, and the Bishop had waited hungrily for
+a chance of catching somebody actively engaged in the sport, so that he
+might drop heavily on that person and make life unpleasant for him.
+
+'Well?' he said, turning to Monk, 'let's have it. What was it all
+about, and what have you got to do with it?'
+
+Monk began to shuffle.
+
+'Oh, it was nothing much,' he said.
+
+'Then what are you doing with the stick?' pursued the Bishop
+relentlessly.
+
+'Young Wilson cheeked Perkins,' said Monk.
+
+Murmurs of approval from the senior day-room. Perkins was one of the
+ornaments referred to above.
+
+'How?' asked Gethryn.
+
+Wilson dashed into the conversation again.
+
+'Perkins told me to go and get him some grub from the shop. I was doing
+some work, so I couldn't. Besides, I'm not his fag. If Perkins wants to
+go for me, why doesn't he do it himself, and not get about a hundred
+fellows to help him?'
+
+'Exactly,' said the Bishop. 'A very sensible suggestion. Perkins, fall
+upon Wilson and slay him. I'll see fair play. Go ahead.'
+
+'Er--no,' said Perkins uneasily. He was a small, weedy-looking youth,
+not built for fighting except by proxy, and he remembered the episode
+of Wilson and Skinner.
+
+'Then the thing's finished,' said Gethryn. 'Wilson walks over. We
+needn't detain you, Wilson.'
+
+Wilson departed with all the honours of war, and the Bishop turned to
+Monk.
+
+'Now perhaps you'll tell me,' he said, 'what the deuce you and Danvers
+are doing here?'
+
+'Well, hang it all, old chap--'
+
+The Bishop begged that Monk would not call him 'old chap'.
+
+'I'll call you "sir", if you like,' said Monk.
+
+A gleam of hope appeared in the Bishop's eye. Monk was going to give
+him the opportunity he had long sighed for. In cold blood he could
+attack no one, not even Monk, but if he was going to be rude, that
+altered matters.
+
+'What business have you in the day-room?' he said. 'You've got studies
+of your own.'
+
+'If it comes to that,' said Monk, 'so have you. We've got as much
+business here as you. What the deuce are you doing here?'
+
+Taken by itself, taken neat, as it were, this repartee might have been
+insufficient to act as a _casus belli_, but by a merciful
+dispensation of Providence the senior day-room elected to laugh at the
+remark, and to laugh loudly. Monk also laughed. Not, however, for long.
+The next moment the Bishop had darted in, knocked his feet from under
+him, and dragged him to the door. Captain Kettle himself could not have
+done it more neatly.
+
+'Now,' said the Bishop, 'we can discuss the point.'
+
+Monk got up, looking greener than usual, and began to dust his clothes.
+
+'Don't talk rot,' he said, 'I can't fight a prefect.'
+
+This, of course, the Bishop had known all along. What he had intended
+to do if Monk had kept up his end he had not decided when he embarked
+upon the engagement. The head of a House cannot fight by-battles with
+his inferiors without the loss of a good deal of his painfully acquired
+dignity. But Gethryn knew Monk, and he had felt justified in risking
+it. He improved the shining hour with an excursus on the subject of
+bullying, dispensed a few general threats, and left the room.
+
+Monk had--perhaps not unnaturally--not forgotten the incident, and now
+that public opinion ran strongly against Gethryn on account of his
+M.C.C. match manoeuvres, he acted. A mass meeting of the Mob was called
+in his study, and it was unanimously voted that field-outs in the
+morning were undesirable, and that it would be judicious if the team
+were to strike. Now, as the Mob included in their numbers eight of the
+House Eleven, their opinions on the subject carried weight.
+
+'Look here,' said Waterford, struck with a brilliant idea, 'I tell you
+what we'll do. Let's sign a round-robin refusing to play in the House
+matches unless Gethryn resigns the captaincy and the field-outs stop.'
+
+'We may as well sign in alphabetical order,' said Monk prudently.
+'It'll make it safer.'
+
+The idea took the Mob's fancy. The round-robin was drawn up and signed.
+
+'Now, if we could only get Reece,' suggested Danvers. 'It's no good
+asking Marriott, but Reece might sign.'
+
+'Let's have a shot at any rate,' said Monk.
+
+And a deputation, consisting of Danvers, Waterford, and Monk, duly
+waited upon Reece in his study, and broached the project to him.
+
+
+
+
+[13]
+
+LEICESTER'S HOUSE TEAM GOES INTO A SECOND EDITION
+
+
+Reece was working when the deputation entered. He looked up
+enquiringly, but if he was pleased to see his visitors he managed to
+conceal the fact.
+
+'Oh, I say, Reece,' began Monk, who had constituted himself spokesman
+to the expedition, 'are you busy?'
+
+'Yes,' said Reece simply, going on with his writing.
+
+This might have discouraged some people, but Nature had equipped Monk
+with a tough skin, which hints never pierced. He dropped into a chair,
+crossed his legs, and coughed. Danvers and Waterford leaned in
+picturesque attitudes against the door and mantelpiece. There was a
+silence for a minute, during which Reece continued to write unmoved.
+
+'Take a seat, Monk,' he said at last, without looking up.
+
+'Oh, er, thanks, I have,' said Monk. 'I say, Reece, we wanted to speak
+to you.'
+
+'Go ahead then,' said Reece. 'I can listen and write at the same time.
+I'm doing this prose against time.'
+
+'It's about Gethryn.'
+
+'What's Gethryn been doing?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know. Nothing special. It's about his being captain of the
+House team. The chaps seem to think he ought to resign.'
+
+'Which chaps?' enquired Reece, laying down his pen and turning round in
+his chair.
+
+'The rest of the team, you know.'
+
+'Why don't they think he ought to be captain? The head of the House is
+always captain of the House team unless he's too bad to be in it at
+all. Don't the chaps think Gethryn's good at cricket?'
+
+'Oh, he's good enough,' said Monk. 'It's more about this M.C.C. match
+business, you know. His cutting off like that in the middle of the
+match. The chaps think the House ought to take some notice of it.
+Express its disapproval, and that sort of thing.'
+
+'And what do the chaps think of doing about it?'
+
+Monk inserted a hand in his breast-pocket, and drew forth the
+round-robin. He straightened it out, and passed it over to Reece.
+
+'We've drawn up this notice,' he said, 'and we came to see if you'd
+sign it. Nearly all the other chaps in the team have.'
+
+Reece perused the document gravely. Then he handed it back to its
+owner.
+
+'What rot,' said he.
+
+'I don't think so at all,' said Monk.
+
+'Nor do I,' broke in Danvers, speaking for the first time. 'What else
+can we do? We can't let a chap like Gethryn stick to the captaincy.'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'A cad like that!'
+
+'That's a matter of opinion. I don't suppose everyone thinks him a cad.
+I don't, personally.'
+
+'Well, anyway,' asked Waterford, 'are you going to sign?'
+
+'My good man, of course I'm not. Do you mean to say you seriously
+intend to hand in that piffle to Gethryn?'
+
+'Rather,' said Monk.
+
+'Then you'll be making fools of yourselves. I'll tell you exactly
+what'll happen, if you care to know. Gethryn will read this rot, and
+simply cut everybody whose name appears on the list out of the House
+team. I don't know if you're aware of it, but there are several other
+fellows besides you in the House. And if you come to think of it, you
+aren't so awfully good. You three are in the Second. The other five
+haven't got colours at all.'
+
+'Anyhow, we're all in the House team,' said Monk.
+
+'Don't let that worry you,' said Reece, 'you won't be long, if you show
+Gethryn that interesting document. Anything else I can do for you?'
+
+'No, thanks,' said Monk. And the deputation retired.
+
+When they had gone, Reece made his way to the Bishop's study. It was
+not likely that the deputation would deliver their ultimatum until late
+at night, when the study would be empty. From what Reece knew of Monk,
+he judged that it would be pleasanter to him to leave the document
+where the Bishop could find it in the morning, rather than run the
+risks that might attend a personal interview. There was time,
+therefore, to let Gethryn know what was going to happen, so that he
+might not be surprised into doing anything rash, such as resigning the
+captaincy, for example. Not that Reece thought it likely that he would,
+but it was better to take no risks.
+
+Both Marriott and Gethryn were in the study when he arrived.
+
+'Hullo, Reece,' said Marriott, 'come in and take several seats. Have
+ a biscuit? Have two. Have a good many.'
+
+Reece helped himself, and gave them a brief description of the late
+interview.
+
+'I'm not surprised,' said Gethryn, 'I thought Monk would be getting at
+me somehow soon. I shall _have_ to slay that chap someday. What
+ought I to do, do you think?'
+
+'My dear chap,' said Marriott, 'there's only one thing you can do. Cut
+the lot of them out of the team, and fill up with substitutes.'
+
+Reece nodded approval.
+
+'Of course. That's what you must do. As a matter of fact, I told them
+you would. I've given you a reputation. You must live up to it.'
+
+'Besides,' continued Marriott, 'after all it isn't such a crusher, when
+you come to think of it. Only four of them are really certainties for
+their places, Monk, Danvers, Waterford, and Saunders. The rest are
+simply tail.'
+
+Reece nodded again. 'Great minds think alike. Exactly what I told them,
+only they wouldn't listen.'
+
+'Well, whom do you suggest instead of them? Some of the kids are jolly
+keen and all that, but they wouldn't be much good against Baynes and
+Lorimer, for instance.'
+
+'If I were you,' said Marriott, 'I shouldn't think about their batting
+at all. I should go simply for fielding. With a good fielding side we
+ought to have quite a decent chance. There's no earthly reason why you
+and Reece shouldn't put on enough for the first wicket to win all the
+matches. It's been done before. Don't you remember the School House
+getting the cup four years ago when Twiss was captain? They had nobody
+who was any earthly good except Twiss and Birch, and those two used to
+make about a hundred and fifty between them in every match. Besides,
+some of the kids can bat rather well. Wilson for one. He can bowl,
+too.'
+
+'Yes,' said the Bishop, 'all right. Stick down Wilson. Who else?
+Gregson isn't bad. He can field in the slips, which is more than a good
+many chaps can.'
+
+'Gregson's good,' said Reece, 'put him down. That makes five. You might
+have young Lee in too. I've seen him play like a book at his form net
+once or twice.'
+
+'Lee--six. Five more wanted. Where's a House list? Here we are. Now.
+Adams, Bond, Brown, Burgess. Burgess has his points. Shall I stick him
+down?'
+
+'Not presume to dictate,' said Marriott, 'but Adams is streets better
+than Burgess as a field, and just as good a bat.'
+
+'Why, when have you seen him?'
+
+'In a scratch game between his form and another. He was carting all
+over the shop. Made thirty something.'
+
+'We'll have both of them in, then. Plenty of room. This is the team so
+far. Wilson, Gregson, Lee, Adams, and Burgess, with Marriott, Reece,
+and Gethryn. Jolly hot stuff it is, too, by Jove. We'll simply walk
+that tankard. Now, for the last places. I vote we each select a man,
+and nobody's allowed to appeal against the other's decision. I lead off
+with Crowinshaw. Good name, Crowinshaw. Look well on a score sheet.'
+
+'Heave us the list,' said Marriott. 'Thanks. My dear sir, there's only
+one man in the running at all, which his name's Chamberlain. Shove down
+Joseph, and don't let me hear anyone breathe a word against him. Come
+on, Reece, let's have your man. I bet Reece selects some weird rotter.'
+
+Reece pondered.
+
+'Carstairs,' he said.
+
+'Oh, my very dear sir! Carstairs!'
+
+'All criticism barred,' said the Bishop.
+
+'Sorry. By the way, what House are we drawn against in the first
+round?'
+
+'Webster's.'
+
+'Ripping. We can smash Webster's. They've got nobody. It'll be rather a
+good thing having an easy time in our first game. We shall be able to
+get some idea about the team's play. I shouldn't think we could
+possibly get beaten by Webster's.'
+
+There was a knock at the door. Wilson came in with a request that he
+might fetch a book that he had left in the study.
+
+'Oh, Wilson, just the man I wanted to see,' said the Bishop. 'Wilson,
+you're playing against Webster's next week.'
+
+'By Jove,' said Wilson, 'am I really?'
+
+He had spent days in working out on little slips of paper during school
+his exact chances of getting a place in the House team. Recently,
+however, he had almost ceased to hope. He had reckoned on at least
+eight of the senior study being chosen before him.
+
+'Yes,' said the Bishop, 'you must buck up. Practise fielding every
+minute of your spare time. Anybody'll hit you up catches if you ask
+them.'
+
+'Right,' said Wilson, 'I will.'
+
+'All right, then. Go, and tell Lee that I want to see him.'
+
+'Lee,' said the Bishop, when that worthy appeared, 'I wanted to see
+you, to tell you you're playing for the House against Webster's.
+Thought you might like to know.'
+
+'By Jove,' said Lee, 'am I really?'
+
+'Yes. Buck up with your fielding.'
+
+'Right,' said Lee.
+
+'That's all. If you're going downstairs, you might tell Adams to come
+up.'
+
+For a quarter of an hour the Bishop interviewed the junior members of
+his team, and impressed on each of them the absolute necessity of
+bucking up with his fielding. And each of them protested that the
+matter should receive his best consideration.
+
+'Well, they're keen enough anyway,' said Marriott, as the door closed
+behind Carstairs, the last of the new recruits, 'and that's the great
+thing. Hullo, who's that? I thought you had worked through the lot.
+Come in!'
+
+A small form appeared in the doorway, carrying in its right hand a
+neatly-folded note.
+
+'Monk told me to give you this, Gethryn.'
+
+'Half a second,' said the Bishop, as the youth made for the door.
+'There may be an answer.'
+
+'Monk said there wouldn't be one.'
+
+'Oh. No, it's all right. There isn't an answer.'
+
+The door closed. The Bishop laughed, and threw the note over to Reece.
+
+'Recognize it?'
+
+Reece examined the paper.
+
+'It's a fair copy. The one Monk showed me was rather smudged. I suppose
+they thought you might be hurt if you got an inky round-robin.
+Considerate chap, Monk.'
+
+'Let's have a look,' said Marriott. 'By Jove. I say, listen to this
+bit. Like Macaulay, isn't it?'
+
+He read extracts from the ultimatum.
+
+'Let's have it,' said Gethryn, stretching out a hand.
+
+'Not much. I'm going to keep it, and have it framed.'
+
+'All right. I'm going down now to put up the list.'
+
+When he had returned to the study, Monk and Danvers came quietly
+downstairs to look at the notice-board. It was dark in the passage, and
+Monk had to strike a light before he could see to read.
+
+'By George,' he said, as the match flared up, 'Reece was right. He
+has.'
+
+'Well, there's one consolation,' commented Danvers viciously, 'they
+can't possibly get that cup now. They'll have to put us in again soon,
+you see if they don't.'
+
+''M, yes,' said Monk doubtfully.
+
+
+
+
+[14]
+
+NORRIS TAKES A SHORT HOLIDAY
+
+
+'It's all rot,' observed Pringle, 'to say that they haven't a chance,
+because they have.'
+
+He and Lorimer were passing through the cricket-field on their way back
+from an early morning visit to the baths, and had stopped to look at
+Leicester's House team (revised version) taking its daily hour of
+fielding practice. They watched the performance keenly and critically,
+as spies in an enemy's camp.
+
+'Who said they hadn't a chance?' said Lorimer. 'I didn't.'
+
+'Oh, everybody. The chaps call them the Kindergarten and the Kids'
+Happy League, and things of that sort. Rot, I call it. They seem to
+forget that you only want two or three really good men in a team if the
+rest can field. Look at our crowd. They've all either got their
+colours, or else are just outside the teams, and I swear you can't rely
+on one of them to hold the merest sitter right into his hands.'
+
+On the subject of fielding in general, and catching in particular,
+Pringle was feeling rather sore. In the match which his House had just
+won against Browning's, he had put himself on to bowl in the second
+innings. He was one of those bowlers who manage to capture from six to
+ten wickets in the course of a season, and the occasions on which he
+bowled really well were few. On this occasion he had bowled
+excellently, and it had annoyed him when five catches, five soft,
+gentle catches, were missed off him in the course of four overs. As he
+watched the crisp, clean fielding which was shown by the very smallest
+of Leicester's small 'tail', he felt that he would rather have any of
+that despised eight on his side than any of the School House lights
+except Baynes and Lorimer.
+
+'Our lot's all right, really,' said Lorimer, in answer to Pringle's
+sweeping condemnation. 'Everybody has his off days. They'll be all
+right next match.'
+
+'Doubt it,' replied Pringle. 'It's all very well for you. You bowl to
+hit the sticks. I don't. Now just watch these kids for a moment. Now!
+Look! No, he couldn't have got to that. Wait a second. Now!'
+
+Gethryn had skied one into the deep. Wilson, Burgess, and Carstairs all
+started for it.
+
+'Burgess,' called the Bishop.
+
+The other two stopped dead. Burgess ran on and made the catch.
+
+'Now, there you are,' said Pringle, pointing his moral, 'see how those
+two kids stopped when Gethryn called. If that had happened in one of
+our matches, you'd have had half a dozen men rotting about underneath
+the ball, and getting in one another's way, and then probably winding
+up by everybody leaving the catch to everybody else.'
+
+'Oh, come on,' said Lorimer, 'you're getting morbid. Why the dickens
+didn't you think of having our fellows out for fielding practice, if
+you're so keen on it?'
+
+'They wouldn't have come. When a chap gets colours, he seems to think
+he's bought the place. You can't drag a Second Eleven man out of his
+bed before breakfast to improve his fielding. He thinks it can't be
+improved. They're a heart-breaking crew.'
+
+'Good,' said Lorimer, 'I suppose that includes me?'
+
+'No. You're a model man. I have seen you hold a catch now and then.'
+
+'Thanks. Oh, I say, I gave in the poem yesterday. I hope the deuce it
+won't get the prize. I hope they won't spot, either, that I didn't
+write the thing.'
+
+'Not a chance,' said Pringle complacently, 'you're all right. Don't you
+worry yourself.'
+
+Webster's, against whom Leicester's had been drawn in the opening round
+of the House matches, had three men in their team, and only three, who
+knew how to hold a bat. It was the slackest House in the School, and
+always had been. It did not cause any overwhelming surprise,
+accordingly, when Leicester's beat them without fatigue by an innings
+and a hundred and twenty-one runs. Webster's won the toss, and made
+thirty-five. For Leicester's, Reece and Gethryn scored fifty and
+sixty-two respectively, and Marriott fifty-three not out. They then,
+with two wickets down, declared, and rattled Webster's out for seventy.
+The public, which had had its eye on the team, in order to see how its
+tail was likely to shape, was disappointed. The only definite fact that
+could be gleaned from the match was that the junior members of the team
+were not to be despised in the field. The early morning field-outs had
+had their effect. Adams especially shone, while Wilson at cover and
+Burgess in the deep recalled Jessop and Tyldesley.
+
+The School made a note of the fact. So did the Bishop. He summoned the
+eight juniors _seriatim_ to his study, and administered much
+praise, coupled with the news that fielding before breakfast would go
+on as usual.
+
+Leicester's had drawn against Jephson's in the second round. Norris's
+lot had beaten Cooke's by, curiously enough, almost exactly the same
+margin as that by which Leicester's had defeated Webster's. It was
+generally considered that this match would decide Leicester's chances
+for the cup. If they could beat a really hot team like Jephson's, it
+was reasonable to suppose that they would do the same to the rest of
+the Houses, though the School House would have to be reckoned with. But
+the School House, as Pringle had observed, was weak in the field. It
+was not a coherent team. Individually its members were good, but they
+did not play together as Leicester's did.
+
+But the majority of the School did not think seriously of their
+chances. Except for Pringle, who, as has been mentioned before, always
+made a point of thinking differently from everyone else, no one really
+believed that they would win the cup, or even appear in the final. How
+could a team whose tail began at the fall of the second wicket defeat
+teams which, like the School House, had no real tail at all?
+
+Norris supported this view. It was for this reason that when, at
+breakfast on the day on which Jephson's were due to play Leicester's,
+he received an invitation from one of his many uncles to spend a
+weekend at his house, he decided to accept it.
+
+This uncle was a man of wealth. After winning two fortunes on the Stock
+Exchange and losing them both, he had at length amassed a third, with
+which he retired in triumph to the country, leaving Throgmorton Street
+to exist as best it could without him. He had bought a 'show-place' at
+a village which lay twenty miles by rail to the east of Beckford, and
+it had always been Norris's wish to see this show-place, a house which
+was said to combine the hoariest of antiquity with a variety of modern
+comforts.
+
+Merely to pay a flying visit there would be good. But his uncle held
+out an additional attraction. If Norris could catch the one-forty from
+Horton, he would arrive just in time to take part in a cricket match,
+that day being the day of the annual encounter with the neighbouring
+village of Pudford. The rector of Pudford, the opposition captain, so
+wrote Norris's uncle, had by underhand means lured down three really
+decent players from Oxford--not Blues, but almost--who had come to the
+village ostensibly to read classics with him as their coach, but in
+reality for the sole purpose of snatching from Little Bindlebury (his
+own village) the laurels they had so nobly earned the year before. He
+had heard that Norris was captaining the Beckford team this year, and
+had an average of thirty-eight point nought three two, so would he come
+and make thirty-eight point nought three two for Little Bindlebury?
+
+'This,' thought Norris, 'is Fame. This is where I spread myself. I must
+be in this at any price.'
+
+He showed the letter to Baker.
+
+'What a pity,' said Baker.
+
+'What's a pity?'
+
+'That you won't be able to go. It seems rather a catch.'
+
+'Can't go?' said Norris; 'my dear sir, you're talking through your hat.
+Think I'm going to refuse an invitation like this? Not if I know it.
+I'm going to toddle off to Jephson, get an exeat, and catch that
+one-forty. And if I don't paralyse the Pudford bowling, I'll shoot
+myself.'
+
+'But the House match! Leicester's! This afternoon!' gurgled the amazed
+Baker.
+
+'Oh, hang Leicester's. Surely the rest of you can lick the Kids' Happy
+League without my help. If you can't, you ought to be ashamed of
+yourselves. I've chosen you a wicket with my own hands, fit to play a
+test match on.'
+
+'Of course we ought to lick them. But you can never tell at cricket
+what's going to happen. We oughtn't to run any risks when we've got
+such a good chance of winning the pot. Why, it's centuries since we won
+the pot. Don't you go.'
+
+'I must, man. It's the chance of a lifetime.'
+
+Baker tried another method of attack.
+
+'Besides,' he said, 'you don't suppose Jephson'll let you off to play
+in a beastly little village game when there's a House match on?'
+
+'He must never know!' hissed Norris, after the manner of the
+Surrey-side villain.
+
+'He's certain to ask why you want to get off so early.'
+
+'I shall tell him my uncle particularly wishes me to come early.'
+
+'Suppose he asks why?'
+
+'I shall say I can't possibly imagine.'
+
+'Oh, well, if you're going to tell lies--'
+
+'Not at all. Merely a diplomatic evasion. I'm not bound to go and sob
+out my secrets on Jephson's waistcoat.'
+
+Baker gave up the struggle with a sniff. Norris went to Mr Jephson and
+got leave to spend the week-end at his uncle's. The interview went
+without a hitch, as Norris had prophesied.
+
+'You will miss the House match, Norris, then?' said Mr Jephson.
+
+'I'm afraid so, sir. But Mr Leicester's are very weak.'
+
+'H'm. Reece, Marriott, and Gethryn are a good beginning.'
+
+'Yes, sir. But they've got nobody else. Their tail starts after those
+three.'
+
+'Very well. But it seems a pity.'
+
+'Thank you, sir,' said Norris, wisely refraining from discussing the
+matter. He had got his exeat, which was what he had come for.
+
+In all the annals of Pudford and Little Bindlebury cricket there had
+never been such a match as that year's. The rector of Pudford and his
+three Oxford experts performed prodigies with the bat, prodigies, that
+is to say, judged from the standpoint of ordinary Pudford scoring,
+where double figures were the exception rather than the rule.
+
+The rector, an elderly, benevolent-looking gentleman, played with
+astounding caution and still more remarkable luck for seventeen.
+Finally, after he had been in an hour and ten minutes, mid-on accepted
+the eighth easy chance offered to him, and the ecclesiastic had to
+retire. The three 'Varsity men knocked up a hundred between them, and
+the complete total was no less than a hundred and thirty-four.
+
+Then came the sensation of the day. After three wickets had fallen for
+ten runs, Norris and the Little Bindlebury curate, an old Cantab,
+stayed together and knocked off the deficit.
+
+Norris's contribution of seventy-eight not out was for many a day the
+sole topic of conversation over the evening pewter at the 'Little
+Bindlebury Arms'. A non-enthusiast, who tried on one occasion to
+introduce the topic of Farmer Giles's grey pig, found himself the most
+unpopular man in the village.
+
+On the Monday morning Norris returned to Jephson's, with pride in his
+heart and a sovereign in his pocket, the latter the gift of his
+excellent uncle.
+
+He had had, he freely admitted to himself, a good time. His uncle had
+done him well, exceedingly well, and he looked forward to going to the
+show-place again in the near future. In the meantime he felt a languid
+desire to know how the House match was going on. They must almost have
+finished the first innings, he thought--unless Jephson's had run up a
+very big score, and kept their opponents in the field all the
+afternoon.
+
+'Hullo, Baker,' he said, tramping breezily into the study, 'I've had
+the time of a lifetime. Great, simply! No other word for it. How's the
+match getting on?'
+
+Baker looked up from the book he was reading.
+
+'What match?' he enquired coldly.
+
+'House match, of course, you lunatic. What match did you think I meant?
+How's it going on?'
+
+'It's not going on,' said Baker, 'it's stopped.'
+
+'You needn't be a funny goat,' said Norris complainingly. 'You know
+what I mean. What happened on Saturday?'
+
+'They won the toss,' began Baker slowly.
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'And went in and made a hundred and twenty.'
+
+'Good. I told you they were no use. A hundred and twenty's rotten.'
+
+'Then we went in, and made twenty-one.'
+
+'Hundred and twenty-one.'
+
+'No. Just a simple twenty-one without any trimmings of any sort.'
+
+'But, man! How? Why? How on earth did it happen?'
+
+'Gethryn took eight for nine. Does that seem to make it any clearer?'
+
+'Eight for nine? Rot.'
+
+'Show you the score-sheet if you care to see it. In the second
+innings--'
+
+'Oh, you began a second innings?'
+
+'Yes. We also finished it. We scored rather freely in the second
+innings. Ten was on the board before the fifth wicket fell. In the end
+we fairly collared the bowling, and ran up a total of forty-eight.'
+
+Norris took a seat, and tried to grapple with the situation.
+
+'Forty-eight! Look here, Baker, swear you're not ragging.'
+
+Baker took a green scoring-book from the shelf and passed it to him.
+
+'Look for yourself,' he said.
+
+Norris looked. He looked long and earnestly. Then he handed the book
+back.
+
+'Then they've won!' he said blankly.
+
+'How do you guess these things?' observed Baker with some bitterness.
+
+'Well, you are a crew,' said Norris. 'Getting out for twenty-one and
+forty-eight! I see Gethryn got nine for thirty in the second innings.
+He seems to have been on the spot. I suppose the wicket suited him.'
+
+'If you can call it a wicket. Next time you specially select a pitch
+for the House to play on, I wish you'd hunt up something with some
+slight pretensions to decency.'
+
+'Why, what was wrong with the pitch? It was a bit worn, that was all.'
+
+'If,' said Baker, 'you call having holes three inches deep just where
+every ball pitches being a bit worn, I suppose it was. Anyhow, it would
+have been almost as well, don't you think, if you'd stopped and played
+for the House, instead of going off to your rotten village match? You
+were sick enough when Gethryn went off in the M.C.C. match.'
+
+'Oh, curse,' said Norris.
+
+For he had been hoping against hope that the parallel nature of the two
+incidents would be less apparent to other people than it was to
+himself.
+
+And so it came about that Leicester's passed successfully through the
+first two rounds and soared into the dizzy heights of the semi-final.
+
+
+
+
+[15]
+
+_VERSUS_ CHARCHESTER (AT CHARCHESTER)
+
+
+From the fact that he had left his team so basely in the lurch on the
+day of an important match, a casual observer might have imagined that
+Norris did not really care very much whether his House won the cup or
+not. But this was not the case. In reality the success of Jephson's was
+a very important matter to him. A sudden whim had induced him to accept
+his uncle's invitation, but now that that acceptance had had such
+disastrous results, he felt inclined to hire a sturdy menial by the
+hour to kick him till he felt better. To a person in such a frame of
+mind there are three methods of consolation. He can commit suicide, he
+can take to drink, or he can occupy his mind with other matters, and
+cure himself by fixing his attention steadily on some object, and
+devoting his whole energies to the acquisition of the same.
+
+Norris chose the last method. On the Saturday week following his
+performance for Little Bindlebury, the Beckford Eleven was due to
+journey to Charchester, to play the return match against that school on
+their opponents' ground, and Norris resolved that that match should be
+won. For the next week the team practised assiduously, those members of
+it who were not playing in House matches spending every afternoon at
+the nets. The treatment was not without its effect. The team had been a
+good one before. Now every one of the eleven seemed to be at the very
+summit of his powers. New and hitherto unsuspected strokes began to be
+developed, leg glances which recalled the Hove and Ranjitsinhji, late
+cuts of Palairetical brilliance. In short, all Nature may be said to
+have smiled, and by the end of the week Norris was beginning to be
+almost cheerful once more. And then, on the Monday before the match,
+Samuel Wilberforce Gosling came to school with his right arm in a
+sling. Norris met him at the School gates, rubbed his eyes to see
+whether it was not after all some horrid optical illusion, and finally,
+when the stern truth came home to him, almost swooned with anguish.
+
+'What? How? Why?' he enquired lucidly.
+
+The injured Samuel smiled feebly.
+
+'I'm fearfully sorry, Norris,' he said.
+
+'Don't say you can't play on Saturday,' moaned Norris.
+
+'Frightfully sorry. I know it's a bit of a sickener. But I don't see
+how I can, really. The doctor says I shan't be able to play for a
+couple of weeks.'
+
+Now that the blow had definitely fallen, Norris was sufficiently
+himself again to be able to enquire into the matter.
+
+'How on earth did you do it? How did it happen?'
+
+Gosling looked guiltier than ever.
+
+'It was on Saturday evening,' he said. 'We were ragging about at home a
+bit, you know, and my young sister wanted me to send her down a few
+balls. Somebody had given her a composition bean and a bat, and she's
+been awfully keen on the game ever since she got them.'
+
+'I think it's simply sickening the way girls want to do everything we
+do,' said Norris disgustedly.
+
+Gosling spoke for the defence.
+
+'Well, she's only thirteen. You can't blame the kid. Seemed to me a
+jolly healthy symptom. Laudable ambition and that sort of thing.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, I sent down one or two. She played 'em like a book. Bit inclined
+to pull. All girls are. So I put in a long hop on the off, and she let
+go at it like Jessop. She's got a rattling stroke in mid-on's
+direction. Well, the bean came whizzing back rather wide on the right.
+I doubled across to bring off a beefy c-and-b, and the bally thing took
+me right on the tips of the fingers. Those composition balls hurt like
+blazes, I can tell you. Smashed my second finger simply into hash, and
+I couldn't grip a ball now to save my life. Much less bowl. I'm awfully
+sorry. It's a shocking nuisance.'
+
+Norris agreed with him. It was more than a nuisance. It was a
+staggerer. Now that Gethryn no longer figured for the First Eleven,
+Gosling was the School's one hope. Baynes was good on his wicket, but
+the wickets he liked were the sea-of-mud variety, and this summer fine
+weather had set in early and continued. Lorimer was also useful, but
+not to be mentioned in the same breath as the great Samuel. The former
+was good, the latter would be good in a year or so. His proper sphere
+of action was the tail. If the first pair of bowlers could dismiss five
+good batsmen, Lorimer's fast, straight deliveries usually accounted for
+the rest. But there had to be somebody to pave the way for him. He was
+essentially a change bowler. It is hardly to be wondered at that Norris
+very soon began to think wistfully of the Bishop, who was just now
+doing such great things with the ball, wasting his sweetness on the
+desert air of the House matches. Would it be consistent with his
+dignity to invite him back into the team? It was a nice point. With
+some persons there might be a risk. But Gethryn, as he knew perfectly
+well, was not the sort of fellow to rub in the undeniable fact that the
+School team could not get along without him. He had half decided to ask
+him to play against Charchester, when Gosling suggested the very same
+thing.
+
+'Why don't you have Gethryn in again?' he said. 'You've stood him out
+against the O.B.s and the Masters. Surely that's enough. Especially as
+he's miles the best bowler in the School.'
+
+'Bar yourself.'
+
+'Not a bit. He can give me points. You take my tip and put him in
+again.'
+
+'Think he'd play if I put him down? Because, you know, I'm dashed if
+I'm going to do any grovelling and that sort of thing.'
+
+'Certain to, I should think. Anyhow, it's worth trying.'
+
+Pringle, on being consulted, gave the same opinion, and Norris was
+convinced. The list went up that afternoon, and for the first time
+since the M.C.C. match Gethryn's name appeared in its usual place.
+
+'Norris is learning wisdom in his old age,' said Marriott to the
+Bishop, as they walked over to the House that evening.
+
+Leicester's were in the middle of their semi-final, and looked like
+winning it.
+
+'I was just wondering what to do about it,' said Gethryn. 'What would
+you do? Play, do you think?'
+
+'Play! My dear man, what else did you propose to do? You weren't
+thinking of refusing?'
+
+'I was.'
+
+'But, man! That's rank treason. If you're put down to play for the
+School you must play. There's no question about it. If Norris knocked
+you down with one hand and put you up on the board with the other,
+you'd have to play all the same. You mustn't have any feelings where
+the School is concerned. Nobody's ever refused to play in a first
+match. It's one of the things you can't do. Norris hasn't given you
+much of a time lately, I admit. Still, you must lump that. Excuse
+sermon. I hope it's done you good.'
+
+'Very well. I'll play. It's rather rot, though.'
+
+'No, it's all right, really. It's only that you've got into a groove.
+You're so used to doing the heavy martyr, that the sudden change has
+knocked you out rather. Come and have an ice before the shop shuts.'
+
+So Gethryn came once more into the team, and travelled down to
+Charchester with the others. And at this point a painful alternative
+faces me. I have to choose between truth and inclination. I should like
+to say that the Bishop eclipsed himself, and broke all previous records
+in the Charchester match. By the rules of the dramatic, nothing else is
+possible. But truth, though it crush me, and truth compels me to admit
+that his performance was in reality distinctly mediocre. One of his
+weak points as a bowler was that he was at sea when opposed to a
+left-hander. Many bowlers have this failing. Some strange power seems
+to compel them to bowl solely on the leg side, and nothing but long
+hops and full pitches. It was so in the case of Gethryn. Charchester
+won the toss, and batted first on a perfect wicket. The first pair of
+batsmen were the captain, a great bat, who had scored seventy-three not
+out against Beckford in the previous match, and a left-handed fiend.
+Baynes's leg-breaks were useless on a wicket which, from the hardness
+of it, might have been constructed of asphalt, and the rubbish the
+Bishop rolled up to the left-handed artiste was painful to witness. At
+four o'clock--the match had started at half-past eleven--the
+Charchester captain reached his century, and was almost immediately
+stumped off Baynes. The Bishop bowled the next man first ball, the one
+bright spot in his afternoon's performance. Then came another long
+stand, against which the Beckford bowling raged in vain. At five
+o'clock, Charchester by that time having made two hundred and forty-one
+for two wickets, the left-hander ran into three figures, and the
+captain promptly declared the innings closed. Beckford's only chance
+was to play for a draw, and in this they succeeded. When stumps were
+drawn at a quarter to seven, the score was a hundred and three, and
+five wickets were down. The Bishop had the satisfaction of being not
+out with twenty-eight to his credit, but nothing less than a century
+would have been sufficient to soothe him after his shocking bowling
+performance. Pringle, who during the luncheon interval had encountered
+his young friends the Ashbys, and had been duly taunted by them on the
+subject of leather-hunting, was top scorer with forty-one. Norris, I
+regret to say, only made three, running himself out in his second over.
+As the misfortune could not, by any stretch of imagination, be laid at
+anybody else's door but his own, he was decidedly savage. The team
+returned to Beckford rather footsore, very disgusted, and abnormally
+silent. Norris sulked by himself at one end of the saloon carriage, and
+the Bishop sulked by himself at the other end, and even Marriott
+forbore to treat the situation lightly. It was a mournful home-coming.
+No cheering wildly as the brake drove to the College from Horton, no
+shouting of the School song in various keys as they passed through the
+big gates. Simply silence. And except when putting him on to bowl, or
+taking him off, or moving him in the field, Norris had not spoken a
+word to the Bishop the whole afternoon.
+
+It was shortly after this disaster that Mr Mortimer Wells came to stay
+with the Headmaster. Mr Mortimer Wells was a brilliant and superior
+young man, who was at some pains to be a cynic. He was an old pupil of
+the Head's in the days before he had succeeded to the rule of Beckford.
+He had the reputation of being a 'ripe' scholar, and to him had been
+deputed the task of judging the poetical outbursts of the bards of the
+Upper Fifth, with the object of awarding to the most deserving--or,
+perhaps, to the least undeserving--the handsome prize bequeathed by his
+open-handed highness, the Rajah of Seltzerpore.
+
+This gentleman sat with his legs stretched beneath the Headmaster's
+generous table. Dinner had come to an end, and a cup of coffee, acting
+in co-operation with several glasses of port and an excellent cigar,
+had inspired him to hold forth on the subject of poetry prizes. He held
+forth.
+
+'The poetry prize system,' said he--it is astonishing what nonsense a
+man, ordinarily intelligent, will talk after dinner--'is on exactly the
+same principle as those penny-in-the-slot machines that you see at
+stations. You insert your penny. You set your prize subject. In the
+former case you hope for wax vestas, and you get butterscotch. In the
+latter, you hope for something at least readable, and you get the most
+complete, terrible, uninspired twaddle that was ever written on paper.
+The boy mind'--here the ash of his cigar fell off on to his
+waistcoat--'the merely boy mind is incapable of poetry.'
+
+From which speech the shrewd reader will infer that Mr Mortimer Wells
+was something of a prig. And perhaps, altogether shrewd reader, you're
+right.
+
+Mr Lawrie, the master of the Sixth, who had been asked to dinner to
+meet the great man, disagreed as a matter of principle. He was one of
+those men who will take up a cause from pure love of argument.
+
+'I think you're wrong, sir. I'm perfectly convinced you're wrong.'
+
+Mr Wells smiled in his superior way, as if to say that it was a pity
+that Mr Lawrie was so foolish, but that perhaps he could not help it.
+
+'Ah,' he said, 'but you have not had to wade through over thirty of
+these gems in a single week. I have. I can assure you your views would
+undergo a change if you could go through what I have. Let me read you a
+selection. If that does not convert you, nothing will. If you will
+excuse me for a moment, Beckett, I will leave the groaning board, and
+fetch the manuscripts.'
+
+He left the room, and returned with a pile of paper, which he deposited
+in front of him on the table.
+
+'Now,' he said, selecting the topmost manuscript, 'I will take no
+unfair advantage. I will read you the very pick of the bunch. None of
+the other--er--poems come within a long way of this. It is a case of
+Eclipse first and the rest nowhere. The author, the gifted author, is a
+boy of the name of Lorimer, whom I congratulate on taking the Rajah's
+prize. I drain this cup of coffee to him. Are you ready? Now, then.'
+
+He cleared his throat.
+
+
+
+
+[16]
+
+A DISPUTED AUTHORSHIP
+
+
+'One moment,' said Mr Lawrie, 'might I ask what is the subject of the
+poem?'
+
+'Death of Dido,' said the Headmaster. 'Good, hackneyed, evergreen
+subject, mellow with years. Go on, Wells.'
+
+Mr Wells began.
+
+    Queen of Tyre, ancient Tyre,
+      Whilom mistress of the wave.
+
+Mr Lawrie, who had sunk back into the recesses of his chair in an
+attitude of attentive repose, sat up suddenly with a start.
+
+'What!' he cried.
+
+'Hullo,' said Mr Wells, 'has the beauty of the work come home to you
+already?'
+
+'You notice,' he said, as he repeated the couplet, 'that flaws begin to
+appear in the gem right from the start. It was rash of Master Lorimer
+to attempt such a difficult metre. Plucky, but rash. He should have
+stuck to blank verse. Tyre, you notice, two syllables to rhyme with
+"deny her" in line three. "What did fortune e'er deny her? Were not all
+her warriors brave?" That last line seems to me distinctly weak. I
+don't know how it strikes you.'
+
+'You're hypercritical, Wells,' said the Head. 'Now, for a boy I
+consider that a very good beginning. What do you say, Lawrie?'
+
+'I--er. Oh, I think I am hardly a judge.'
+
+'To resume,' said Mr Mortimer Wells. He resumed, and ran through the
+remaining verses of the poem with comments. When he had finished, he
+remarked that, in his opinion a whiff of fresh air would not hurt him.
+If the Headmaster would excuse him, he would select another of those
+excellent cigars, and smoke it out of doors.
+
+'By all means,' said the Head; 'I think I won't join you myself, but
+perhaps Lawrie will.'
+
+'No, thank you. I think I will remain. Yes, I think I will remain.'
+
+Mr Wells walked jauntily out of the room. When the door had shut, Mr
+Lawrie coughed nervously.
+
+'Another cigar, Lawrie?'
+
+'I--er--no, thank you. I want to ask you a question. What is your
+candid opinion of those verses Mr Wells was reading just now?'
+
+The Headmaster laughed.
+
+'I don't think Wells treated them quite fairly. In my opinion they were
+distinctly promising. For a boy in the Upper Fifth, you understand.
+Yes, on the whole they showed distinct promise.'
+
+'They were mine,' said Mr Lawrie.
+
+'Yours! I don't understand. How were they yours?'
+
+'I wrote them. Every word of them.'
+
+'You wrote them! But, my dear Lawrie--'
+
+'I don't wonder that you are surprised. For my own part I am amazed,
+simply amazed. How the boy--I don't even remember his name--contrived
+to get hold of them, I have not the slightest conception. But that he
+did so contrive is certain. The poem is word for word, literally word
+for word, the same as one which I wrote when I was at Cambridge.'
+
+'You
+don't say so!'
+
+'Yes. It can hardly be a coincidence.'
+
+'Hardly,' said the Head. 'Are you certain of this?'
+
+'Perfectly certain. I am not eager to claim the authorship, I can
+assure you, especially after Mr Wells's very outspoken criticisms, but
+there is nothing else to be done. The poem appeared more than a dozen
+years ago, in a small book called _The Dark Horse_.'
+
+'Ah! Something in the Whyte Melville style, I suppose?'
+
+'No,' said Mr Lawrie sharply. 'No. Certainly not. They were serious
+poems, tragical most of them. I had them collected, and published them
+at my own expense. Very much at my own expense. I used a pseudonym, I
+am thankful to say. As far as I could ascertain, the total sale
+amounted to eight copies. I have never felt the very slightest
+inclination to repeat the performance. But how this boy managed to see
+the book is more than I can explain. He can hardly have bought it. The
+price was half-a-guinea. And there is certainly no copy in the School
+library. The thing is a mystery.'
+
+'A mystery that must be solved,' said the Headmaster. 'The fact remains
+that he did see the book, and it is very serious. Wholesale plagiarism
+of this description should be kept for the School magazine. It should
+not be allowed to spread to poetry prizes. I must see Lorimer about
+this tomorrow. Perhaps he can throw some light upon the matter.'
+
+When, in the course of morning school next day, the School porter
+entered the Upper Fifth form-room and informed Mr Sims, who was engaged
+in trying to drive the beauties of Plautus' colloquial style into the
+Upper Fifth brain, that the Headmaster wished to see Lorimer, Lorimer's
+conscience was so abnormally good that for the life of him he could not
+think why he had been sent for. As far as he could remember, there was
+no possible way in which the authorities could get at him. If he had
+been in the habit of smoking out of bounds in lonely fields and
+deserted barns, he might have felt uneasy. But whatever his failings,
+that was not one of them. It could not be anything about bounds,
+because he had been so busy with cricket that he had had no time to
+break them this term. He walked into the presence, glowing with
+conscious rectitude. And no sooner was he inside than the Headmaster,
+with three simple words, took every particle of starch out of his
+anatomy.
+
+'Sit down, Lorimer,' he said.
+
+There are many ways of inviting a person to seat himself. The genial
+'take a pew' of one's equal inspires confidence. The raucous 'sit down
+in front' of the frenzied pit, when you stand up to get a better view
+of the stage, is not so pleasant. But worst of all is the icy 'sit
+down' of the annoyed headmaster. In his mouth the words take to
+themselves new and sinister meanings. They seem to accuse you of
+nameless crimes, and to warn you that anything you may say will be used
+against you as evidence.
+
+'Why have I sent for you, Lorimer?'
+
+A nasty question that, and a very favourite one of the Rev. Mr Beckett,
+Headmaster of Beckford. In nine cases out of ten, the person addressed,
+paralysed with nervousness, would give himself away upon the instant,
+and confess everything. Lorimer, however, was saved by the fact that he
+had nothing to confess. He stifled an inclination to reply 'because the
+woodpecker would peck her', or words to that effect, and maintained a
+pallid silence.
+
+'Have you ever heard of a book called _The Dark Horse_, Lorimer?'
+
+Lorimer began to feel that the conversation was too deep for him. After
+opening in the conventional 'judge-then-placed-the-black-cap-on-his-head'
+manner, his assailant had suddenly begun to babble lightly of sporting
+literature. He began to entertain doubts of the Headmaster's sanity. It
+would not have added greatly to his mystification if the Head had gone
+on to insist that he was the Emperor of Peru, and worked solely by
+electricity.
+
+The Headmaster, for his part, was also surprised. He had worked for
+dismay, conscious guilt, confessions, and the like, instead of blank
+amazement. He, too, began to have his doubts. Had Mr Lawrie been
+mistaken? It was not likely, but it was barely possible. In which case
+the interview had better be brought to an abrupt stop until he had made
+inquiries. The situation was at a deadlock.
+
+Fortunately at this point half-past twelve struck, and the bell rang
+for the end of morning school. The situation was saved, and the tension
+relaxed.
+
+'You may go, Lorimer,' said the Head, 'I will send for you later.'
+
+He swept out of the room, and Lorimer raced over to the House to inform
+Pringle that the Headmaster had run suddenly mad, and should by rights
+be equipped with a strait-waistcoat.
+
+'You never saw such a man,' he said, 'hauled me out of school in the
+middle of a Plautus lesson, dumps me down in a chair, and then asks me
+if I've read some weird sporting novel or other.'
+
+'Sporting novel! My dear man!'
+
+'Well, it sounded like it from the title.'
+
+'The title. Oh!'
+
+'What's up?'
+
+Pringle had leaped to his feet as if he had suddenly discovered that he
+was sitting on something red-hot. His normal air of superior calm had
+vanished. He was breathless with excitement. A sudden idea had struck
+him with the force of a bullet.
+
+'What was the title he asked you if you'd read the book of?' he
+demanded incoherently.
+
+'_The Derby Winner_.'
+
+Pringle sat down again, relieved.
+
+'Oh. Are you certain?'
+
+'No, of course it wasn't that. I was only ragging. The real title was
+_The Dark Horse_. Hullo, what's up now? Have you got 'em too?'
+
+'What's up? I'll tell you. We're done for. Absolutely pipped. That's
+what's the matter.'
+
+'Hang it, man, do give us a chance. Why can't you explain, instead of
+sitting there talking like that? Why are we done? What have we done,
+anyway?'
+
+'The poem, of course, the prize poem. I forgot, I never told you. I
+hadn't time to write anything of my own, so I cribbed it straight out
+of a book called _The Dark Horse_. Now do you see?'
+
+Lorimer saw. He grasped the whole unpainted beauty of the situation in
+a flash, and for some moments it rendered him totally unfit for
+intellectual conversation. When he did speak his observation was brief,
+but it teemed with condensed meaning. It was the conversational
+parallel to the ox in the tea-cup.
+
+'My aunt!' he said.
+
+'There'll be a row about this,' said Pringle.
+
+'What am I to say when he has me in this afternoon? He said he would.'
+
+'Let the whole thing out. No good trying to hush it up. He may let us
+down easy if you're honest about it.'
+
+It relieved Lorimer to hear Pringle talk about 'us'. It meant that he
+was not to be left to bear the assault alone. Which, considering that
+the whole trouble was, strictly speaking, Pringle's fault, was only
+just.
+
+'But how am I to explain? I can't reel off a long yarn all about how
+you did it all, and so on. It would be too low.'
+
+'I know,' said Pringle, 'I've got it. Look here, on your way to the Old
+Man's room you pass the Remove door. Well, when you pass, drop some
+money. I'll be certain to hear it, as I sit next the door. And then
+I'll ask to leave the room, and we'll go up together.'
+
+'Good man, Pringle, you're a genius. Thanks, awfully.'
+
+But as it happened, this crafty scheme was not found necessary. The
+blow did not fall till after lock-up.
+
+Lorimer being in the Headmaster's House, it was possible to interview
+him without the fuss and advertisement inseparable from a 'sending for
+during school'. Just as he was beginning his night-work, the butler
+came with a message that he was wanted in the Headmaster's part of the
+House.
+
+'It was only Mr Lorimer as the master wished to see,' said the butler,
+as Pringle rose to accompany his companion in crime.
+
+'That's all right,' said Pringle, 'the Headmaster's always glad to see
+me. I've got a standing invitation. He'll understand.'
+
+At first, when he saw two where he had only sent for one, the
+Headmaster did not understand at all, and said so. He had prepared to
+annihilate Lorimer hip and thigh, for he was now convinced that his
+blank astonishment at the mention of _The Dark Horse_ during their
+previous interview had been, in the words of the bard, a mere veneer, a
+wile of guile. Since the morning he had seen Mr Lawrie again, and had
+with his own eyes compared the two poems, the printed and the written,
+the author by special request having hunted up a copy of that valuable
+work, _The Dark Horse_, from the depths of a cupboard in his
+rooms.
+
+His astonishment melted before Pringle's explanation, which was brief
+and clear, and gave way to righteous wrath. In well-chosen terms he
+harangued the two criminals. Finally he perorated.
+
+'There is only one point which tells in your favour. You have not
+attempted concealment.' (Pringle nudged Lorimer surreptitiously at
+this.) 'And I may add that I believe that, as you say, you did not
+desire actually to win the prize by underhand means. But I cannot
+overlook such an offence. It is serious. Most serious. You will, both
+of you, go into extra lesson for the remaining Saturdays of the term.'
+
+Extra lesson meant that instead of taking a half-holiday on Saturday
+like an ordinary law-abiding individual, you treated the day as if it
+were a full-school day, and worked from two till four under the eye of
+the Headmaster. Taking into consideration everything, the punishment
+was not an extraordinarily severe one, for there were only two more
+Saturdays to the end of term, and the sentence made no mention of the
+Wednesday half-holidays.
+
+But in effect it was serious indeed. It meant that neither Pringle nor
+Lorimer would be able to play in the final House match against
+Leicester's, which was fixed to begin on the next Saturday at two
+o'clock. Among the rules governing the House matches was one to the
+effect that no House might start a match with less than eleven men, nor
+might the Eleven be changed during the progress of the match--a rule
+framed by the Headmaster, not wholly without an eye to emergencies like
+the present.
+
+'Thank goodness,' said Pringle, 'that there aren't any more First
+matches. It's bad enough, though, by Jove, as it is. I suppose it's
+occurred to you that this cuts us out of playing in the final?'
+
+Lorimer said the point had not escaped his notice.
+
+'I wish,' he observed, with simple pathos, 'that I'd got the Rajah of
+Seltzerpore here now. I'd strangle him. I wonder if the Old Man
+realizes that he's done his own House out of the cup?'
+
+'Wouldn't care if he did. Still, it's a sickening nuisance. Leicester's
+are a cert now.'
+
+'Absolute cert,' said Lorimer; 'Baynes can't do all the bowling,
+especially on a hard wicket, and there's nobody else. As for our
+batting and fielding--'
+
+'Don't,' said-Pringle gloomily, 'it's too awful.'
+
+On the following Saturday, Leicester's ran up a total in their first
+innings which put the issue out of doubt, and finished off the game on
+the Monday by beating the School House by six wickets.
+
+
+
+
+[17]
+
+THE WINTER TERM
+
+
+It was the first day of the winter term.
+
+The Bishop, as he came back by express, could not help feeling that,
+after all, life considered as an institution had its points. Things had
+mended steadily during the last weeks of the term. He had kept up his
+end as head of the House perfectly. The internal affairs of Leicester's
+were going as smoothly as oil. And there was the cricket cup to live up
+to. Nothing pulls a House together more than beating all comers in the
+field, especially against odds, as Leicester's had done. And then Monk
+and Danvers had left. That had set the finishing touch to a good term's
+work. The Mob were no longer a power in the land. Waterford remained,
+but a subdued, benevolent Waterford, with a wonderful respect for law
+and order. Yes, as far as the House was concerned, Gethryn felt no
+apprehensions. As regarded the School at large, things were bound to
+come right in time. A school has very little memory. And in the present
+case the Bishop, being second man in the Fifteen, had unusual
+opportunities of righting himself in the eyes of the multitude. In the
+winter term cricket is forgotten. Football is the only game that
+counts.
+
+And to round off the whole thing, when he entered his study he found a
+letter on the table. It was from Farnie, and revealed two curious and
+interesting facts. Firstly he had left, and Beckford was to know him no
+more. Secondly--this was even more remarkable--he possessed a
+conscience.
+
+'Dear Gethryn,' ran the letter, 'I am writing to tell you my father is
+sending me to a school in France, so I shall not come back to Beckford.
+I am sorry about the M.C.C. match, and I enclose the four pounds you
+lent me. I utterly bar the idea of going to France. It's beastly, yours
+truly, R. Farnie.'
+
+The money mentioned was in the shape of a cheque, signed by Farnie
+senior.
+
+Gethryn was distinctly surprised. That all this time remorse like a
+worm i' the bud should have been feeding upon his uncle's damask cheek,
+as it were, he had never suspected. His relative's demeanour since the
+M.C.C. match had, it is true, been considerably toned down, but this he
+had attributed to natural causes, not unnatural ones like conscience.
+As for the four pounds, he had set it down as a bad debt. To get it
+back was like coming suddenly into an unexpected fortune. He began to
+think that there must have been some good in Farnie after all, though
+he was fain to admit that without the aid of a microscope the human eye
+might well have been excused for failing to detect it.
+
+His next thought was that there was nothing now to prevent him telling
+the whole story to Reece and Marriott. Reece, if anybody, deserved to
+have his curiosity satisfied. The way in which he had abstained from
+questions at the time of the episode had been nothing short of
+magnificent. Reece must certainly be told.
+
+Neither Reece nor Marriott had arrived at the moment. Both were in the
+habit of returning at the latest possible hour, except at the beginning
+of the summer term. The Bishop determined to reserve his story until
+the following evening.
+
+Accordingly, when the study kettle was hissing on the Etna, and Wilson
+was crouching in front of the fire, making toast in his own inimitable
+style, he embarked upon his narrative.
+
+'I say, Marriott.'
+
+'Hullo.'
+
+'Do you notice a subtle change in me this term? Does my expressive
+purple eye gleam more brightly than of yore? It does. Exactly so. I
+feel awfully bucked up. You know that kid Farnie has left?'
+
+'I thought I missed his merry prattle. What's happened to him?'
+
+'Gone to a school in France somewhere.'
+
+'Jolly for France.'
+
+'Awfully. But the point is that now he's gone I can tell you about that
+M.C.C. match affair. I know you want to hear what really did happen
+that afternoon.'
+
+Marriott pointed significantly at Wilson, whose back was turned.
+
+'Oh, that's all right,' said Gethryn. 'Wilson.'
+
+'Yes?'
+
+'You mustn't listen. Try and think you're a piece of furniture. See?
+And if you do happen to overhear anything, you needn't go gassing about
+it. Follow?'
+
+'All right,' said Wilson, and Gethryn told his tale.
+
+'Jove,' he said, as he finished, 'that's a relief. It's something to
+have got that off my chest. I do bar keeping a secret.'
+
+'But, I say,' said Marriott.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, it was beastly good of you to do it, and that sort of thing, I
+suppose. I see that all right. But, my dear man, what a rotten thing to
+do. A kid like that. A little beast who simply cried out for sacking.'
+
+'Well, at any rate, it's over now. You needn't jump on me. I acted from
+the best motives. That's what my grandfather, Farnie's _pater_,
+you know, always used to say when he got at me for anything in the
+happy days of my childhood. Don't sit there looking like a beastly
+churchwarden, you ass. Buck up, and take an intelligent interest in
+things.'
+
+'No, but really, Bishop,' said Marriott, 'you must treat this
+seriously. You'll have to let the other chaps know about it.'
+
+'How? Put it up on the notice-board? This is to certify that Mr Allan
+Gethryn, of Leicester's House, Beckford, is dismissed without a stain
+on his character. You ass, how can I let them know? I seem to see
+myself doing the boy-hero style of things. My friends, you wronged me,
+you wronged me very grievously. But I forgive you. I put up with your
+cruel scorn. I endured it. I steeled myself against it. And now I
+forgive you profusely, every one of you. Let us embrace. It wouldn't
+do. You must see that much. Don't be a goat. Is that toast done yet,
+Wilson?'
+
+Wilson exhibited several pounds of the article in question.
+
+'Good,' said the Bishop. 'You're a great man, Wilson. You can make a
+small selection of those biscuits, and if you bag all the sugar ones
+I'll slay you, and then you can go quietly downstairs, and rejoin your
+sorrowing friends. And don't you go telling them what I've been
+saying.'
+
+'Rather not,' said Wilson.
+
+He made his small selection, and retired. The Bishop turned to Marriott
+again.
+
+'I shall tell Reece, because he deserves it, and I rather think I shall
+tell Gosling and Pringle. Nobody else, though. What's the good of it?
+Everybody'll forget the whole thing by next season.'
+
+'How about Norris?' asked Marriott.
+
+'Now there you have touched the spot. I can't possibly tell Norris
+myself. My natural pride is too enormous. Descended from a primordial
+atomic globule, you know, like Pooh Bah. And I shook hands with a duke
+once. The man Norris and I, I regret to say, had something of a row on
+the subject last term. We parted with mutual expressions of hate, and
+haven't spoken since. What I should like would be for somebody else to
+tell him all about it. Not you. It would look too much like a put-up
+job. So don't you go saying anything. Swear.'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'Because you mustn't. Swear. Let me hear you swear by the bones of your
+ancestors.'
+
+'All right. I call it awful rot, though.'
+
+'Can't be helped. Painful but necessary. Now I'm going to tell Reece,
+though I don't expect he'll remember anything about it. Reece never
+remembers anything beyond his last meal.'
+
+'Idiot,' said Marriott after him as the door closed. 'I don't know,
+though,' he added to himself.
+
+And, pouring himself out another cup of tea, he pondered deeply over
+the matter.
+
+Reece heard the news without emotion.
+
+'You're a good sort, Bishop,' he said, 'I knew something of the kind
+must have happened. It reminds me of a thing that happened to--'
+
+'Yes, it is rather like it, isn't it?' said the Bishop. 'By the way,
+talking about stories, a chap I met in the holidays told me a ripper.
+You see, this chap and his brother--'
+
+He discoursed fluently for some twenty minutes. Reece sighed softly,
+but made no attempt to resume his broken narrative. He was used to this
+sort of thing.
+
+It was a fortnight later, and Marriott and the Bishop were once more
+seated in their study waiting for Wilson to get tea ready. Wilson made
+toast in the foreground. Marriott was in football clothes, rubbing his
+shin gently where somebody had kicked it in the scratch game that
+afternoon. After rubbing for a few moments in silence, he spoke
+suddenly.
+
+'You must tell Norris,' he said. 'It's all rot.'
+
+'I can't.'
+
+'Then I shall.'
+
+'No, don't. You swore you wouldn't.'
+
+'Well, but look here. I just want to ask you one question. What sort of
+a time did you have in that scratch game tonight?'
+
+'Beastly. I touched the ball exactly four times. If I wasn't so awfully
+ornamental, I don't see what would be the use of my turning out at all.
+I'm no practical good to the team.'
+
+'Exactly. That's just what I wanted to get at. I don't mean your remark
+about your being ornamental, but about your never touching the ball.
+Until you explain matters to Norris, you never will get a decent pass.
+Norris and you are a rattling good pair of centre threes, but if he
+never gives you a pass, I don't see how we can expect to have any
+combination in the First. It's no good my slinging out the ball if the
+centres stick to it like glue directly they get it, and refuse to give
+it up. It's simply sickening.'
+
+Marriott played half for the First Fifteen, and his soul was in the
+business.
+
+'But, my dear chap,' said Gethryn, 'you don't mean to tell me that a
+man like Norris would purposely rot up the First's combination because
+he happened to have had a row with the other centre. He's much too
+decent a fellow.'
+
+'No. I don't mean that exactly. What he does is this. I've watched him.
+He gets the ball. He runs with it till his man is on him, and then he
+thinks of passing. You're backing him up. He sees you, and says to
+himself, "I can't pass to that cad"--'
+
+'Meaning me?'
+
+'Meaning you.'
+
+'Thanks awfully.'
+
+'Don't mention it. I'm merely quoting his thoughts, as deduced by me.
+He says, "I can't pass to that--well, individual, if you prefer it.
+Where's somebody else?" So he hesitates, and gets tackled, or else
+slings the ball wildly out to somebody who can't possibly get to it.
+It's simply infernal. And we play the Nomads tomorrow, too. Something
+must be done.'
+
+'Somebody ought to tell him. Why doesn't our genial skipper assert his
+authority?'
+
+'Hill's a forward, you see, and doesn't get an opportunity of noticing
+it. I can't tell him, of course. I've not got my colours--'
+
+'You're a cert. for them.'
+
+'Hope so. Anyway, I've not got them yet, and Norris has, so I can't
+very well go slanging him to Hill. Sort of thing rude people would call
+side.'
+
+'Well, I'll look out tomorrow, and if it's as bad as you think, I'll
+speak to Hill. It's a beastly thing to have to do.'
+
+'Beastly,' agreed Marriott. 'It's got to be done, though. We can't go
+through the season without any combination in the three-quarter line,
+just to spare Norris's feelings.'
+
+'It's a pity, though,' said the Bishop, 'because Norris is a ripping
+good sort of chap, really. I wish we hadn't had that bust-up last
+term.'
+
+
+
+
+[18]
+
+THE BISHOP SCORES
+
+
+At this point Wilson finished the toast, and went out. As he went he
+thought over what he had just heard. Marriott and Gethryn frequently
+talked the most important School politics before him, for they had
+discovered at an early date that he was a youth of discretion, who
+could be trusted not to reveal state secrets. But matters now seemed to
+demand such a revelation. It was a serious thing to do, but there was
+nobody else to do it, and it obviously must be done, so, by a simple
+process of reasoning, he ought to do it. Half an hour had to elapse
+before the bell rang for lock-up. There was plenty of time to do the
+whole thing and get back to the House before the door was closed. He
+took his cap, and trotted off to Jephson's.
+
+Norris was alone in his study when Wilson knocked at the door. He
+seemed surprised to see his visitor. He knew Wilson well by sight, he
+being captain of the First Eleven and Wilson a distinctly promising
+junior bat, but this was the first time he had ever exchanged a word of
+conversation with him.
+
+'Hullo,' he said, putting down his book.
+
+'Oh, I say, Norris,' began Wilson nervously, 'can I speak to you for a
+minute?'
+
+'All right. Go ahead.'
+
+After two false starts, Wilson at last managed to get the thread of his
+story. He did not mention Marriott's remarks on football subjects, but
+confined himself to the story of Farnie and the bicycle ride, as he had
+heard it from Gethryn on the second evening of the term.
+
+'So that's how it was, you see,' he concluded.
+
+There was a long silence. Wilson sat nervously on the edge of his
+chair, and Norris stared thoughtfully into the fire.
+
+'So shall I tell him it's all right?' asked Wilson at last.
+
+'Tell who what's all right?' asked Norris politely.
+
+'Oh, er, Gethryn, you know,' replied Wilson, slightly disconcerted. He
+had had a sort of idea that Norris would have rushed out of the room,
+sprinted over to Leicester's, and flung himself on the Bishop's bosom
+in an agony of remorse. He appeared to be taking things altogether too
+coolly.
+
+'No,' said Norris, 'don't tell him anything. I shall have lots of
+chances of speaking to him myself if I want to. It isn't as if we were
+never going to meet again. You'd better cut now. There's the bell just
+going. Good night.'
+
+'Good night, Norris.'
+
+'Oh, and, I say,' said Norris, as Wilson opened the door, 'I meant to
+tell you some time ago. If you buck up next cricket season, it's quite
+possible that you'll get colours of some sort. You might bear that in
+mind.'
+
+'I will,' said Wilson fervently. 'Good night, Norris. Thanks awfully.'
+
+The Nomads brought down a reasonably hot team against Beckford as a
+general rule, for the School had a reputation in the football world.
+They were a big lot this year. Their forwards looked capable, and when,
+after the School full-back had returned the ball into touch on the
+half-way line, the line-out had resulted in a hand-ball and a scrum,
+they proved that appearances were not deceptive. They broke through in
+a solid mass--the Beckford forwards never somehow seemed to get
+together properly in the first scrum of a big match--and rushed the
+ball down the field. Norris fell on it. Another hastily-formed scrum,
+and the Nomads' front rank was off again. Ten yards nearer the School
+line there was another halt. Grainger, the Beckford full-back, whose
+speciality was the stopping of rushes, had curled himself neatly round
+the ball. Then the School forwards awoke to a sense of their
+responsibilities. It was time they did, for Beckford was now penned up
+well within its own twenty-five line, and the Nomad halves were
+appealing pathetically to their forwards to let that ball out, for
+goodness' _sake_. But the forwards fancied a combined rush was the
+thing to play. For a full minute they pushed the School pack towards
+their line, and then some rash enthusiast kicked a shade too hard. The
+ball dribbled out of the scrum on the School side, and Marriott punted
+into touch.
+
+'You _must_ let it out, you men,' said the aggrieved half-backs.
+
+Marriott's kick had not brought much relief. The visitors were still
+inside the Beckford twenty-five line, and now that their forwards had
+realized the sin and folly of trying to rush the ball through, matters
+became decidedly warm for the School outsides. Norris and Gethryn in
+the centre and Grainger at back performed prodigies of tackling. The
+wing three-quarter hovered nervously about, feeling that their time
+might come at any moment.
+
+The Nomad attack was concentrated on the extreme right.
+
+Philips, the International, was officiating for them as
+wing-three-quarters on that side, and they played to him. If he once
+got the ball he would take a considerable amount of stopping. But the
+ball never managed to arrive. Norris and Gethryn stuck to their men
+closer than brothers.
+
+A prolonged struggle on the goal-line is a great spectacle. That is why
+(purely in the opinion of the present scribe) Rugby is such a much
+better game than Association. You don't get that sort of thing in
+Soccer. But such struggles generally end in the same way. The Nomads
+were now within a couple of yards of the School line. It was a question
+of time. In three minutes the whistle would blow for half-time, and the
+School would be saved.
+
+But in those three minutes the thing happened. For the first time in
+the match the Nomad forwards heeled absolutely cleanly. Hitherto, the
+ball had always remained long enough in the scrum to give Marriott and
+Wogan, the School halves, time to get round and on to their men before
+they could become dangerous. But this time the ball was in and out
+again in a moment. The Nomad half who was taking the scrum picked it
+up, and was over the line before Marriott realized that the ball was
+out at all. The school lining the ropes along the touch-line applauded
+politely but feebly, as was their custom when the enemy scored.
+
+The kick was a difficult one--the man had got over in the corner--and
+failed. The referee blew his whistle for half-time. The teams sucked
+lemons, and the Beckford forwards tried to explain to Hill, the
+captain, why they never got that ball in the scrums. Hill having
+observed bitterly, as he did in every match when the School did not get
+thirty points in the first half, that he 'would chuck the whole lot of
+them out next Saturday', the game recommenced.
+
+Beckford started on the second half with three points against them, but
+with both wind, what there was of it, and slope in their favour. Three
+points, especially in a club match, where one's opponents may
+reasonably be expected to suffer from lack of training and combination,
+is not an overwhelming score.
+
+Beckford was hopeful and determined.
+
+To record all the fluctuations of the game for the next thirty-five
+minutes is unnecessary. Copies of _The Beckfordian_ containing a
+full report, crammed with details, and written in the most polished
+English, may still be had from the editor at the modest price of
+sixpence. Suffice it to say that two minutes from the kick-off the
+Nomads increased their score with a goal from a mark, and almost
+immediately afterwards Marriott gave the School their first score with
+a neat drop-kick. It was about five minutes from the end of the game,
+and the Nomads still led, when the event of the afternoon took place.
+The Nomad forwards had brought the ball down the ground with one of
+their combined dribbles, and a scrum had been formed on the Beckford
+twenty-five line. The visitors heeled as usual. The half who was taking
+the scrum whipped the ball out in the direction of his colleague. But
+before it could reach him, Wogan had intercepted the pass, and was off
+down the field, through the enemy's three-quarter line, with only the
+back in front of him, and with Norris in close attendance, followed by
+Gethryn.
+
+There is nothing like an intercepted pass for adding a dramatic touch
+to a close game. A second before it had seemed as though the School
+must be beaten, for though they would probably have kept the enemy out
+for the few minutes that remained, they could never have worked the
+ball down the field by ordinary give-and-take play. And now, unless
+Wogan shamefully bungled what he had begun so well, victory was
+certain.
+
+There was a danger, though. Wogan might in the excitement of the moment
+try to get past the back and score himself, instead of waiting until
+the back was on him and then passing to Norris. The School on the
+touch-line shrieked their applause, but there was a note of anxiety as
+well. A slight reputation which Wogan had earned for playing a selfish
+game sprang up before their eyes. Would he pass? Or would he run
+himself? If the latter, the odds were anything against his succeeding.
+
+But everything went right. Wogan arrived at the back, drew that
+gentleman's undivided attention to himself, and then slung the ball out
+to Norris, the model of what a pass ought to be. Norris made no mistake
+about it.
+
+Then the remarkable thing happened. The Bishop, having backed Norris up
+for fifty yards at full speed, could not stop himself at once. His
+impetus carried him on when all need for expenditure of energy had come
+to an end. He was just slowing down, leaving Norris to complete the
+thing alone, when to his utter amazement he found the ball in his
+hands. Norris had passed to him. With a clear run in, and the nearest
+foeman yards to the rear, Norris had passed. It was certainly weird,
+but his first duty was to score. There must be no mistake about the
+scoring. Afterwards he could do any thinking that might be required. He
+shot at express speed over the line, and placed the ball in the exact
+centre of the white line which joined the posts. Then he walked back to
+where Norris was waiting for him.
+
+'Good man,' said Norris, 'that was awfully good.'
+
+His tone was friendly. He spoke as he had been accustomed to speak
+before the M.C.C. match. Gethryn took his cue from him. It was evident
+that, for reasons at present unexplained, Norris wished for peace, and
+such being the case, the Bishop was only too glad to oblige him.
+
+'No,' he said, 'it was jolly good of you to let me in like that. Why,
+you'd only got to walk over.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know. I might have slipped or something. Anyhow I thought
+I'd better pass. What price Beckford combination? The home-made
+article, eh?'
+
+'Rather,' said the Bishop.
+
+'Oh, by the way,' said Norris, 'I was talking to young Wilson yesterday
+evening. Or rather he was talking to me. Decent kid, isn't he? He was
+telling me about Farnie. The M.C.C. match, you know, and so on.'
+
+'Oh!' said the Bishop. He began to see how things had happened.
+
+'Yes,' said Norris. 'Hullo, that gives us the game.'
+
+A roar of applause from the touch-line greeted the successful attempt
+of Hill to convert Gethryn's try into the necessary goal. The referee
+performed a solo on the whistle, and immediately afterwards another, as
+if as an encore.
+
+'No side,' he said pensively. The School had won by two points.
+
+'That's all right,' said Norris. 'I say, can you come and have tea in
+my study when you've changed? Some of the fellows are coming. I've
+asked Reece and Marriott, and Pringle said he'd turn up too. It'll be
+rather a tight fit, but we'll manage somehow.'
+
+'Right,' said the Bishop. 'Thanks very much.'
+
+Norris was correct. It was a tight fit. But then a study brew loses
+half its charm if there is room to breathe. It was a most enjoyable
+ceremony in every way. After the serious part of the meal was over, and
+the time had arrived when it was found pleasanter to eat wafer biscuits
+than muffins, the Bishop obliged once more with a recital of his
+adventures on that distant day in the summer term.
+
+There were several comments when he had finished. The only one worth
+recording is Reece's.
+
+Reece said it distinctly reminded him of a thing which had happened to
+a friend of a chap his brother had known at Sandhurst.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Prefect's Uncle, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
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