_Chapter 1_
'Might I observe, sir--'
'You may observe whatever you like,' said the referee kindly.'Twenty-five.'
'The rules say--'
'I have given my decision. Twenty-_five_!' A spot of red appearedon the official cheek. The referee, who had been heckled since thekick-off, was beginning to be annoyed.
'The ball went behind without bouncing, and the rules say--'
'Twenty-FIVE!!' shouted the referee. 'I am perfectly well aware whatthe rules say.' And he blew his whistle with an air of finality. Thesecretary of the Bargees' F.C. subsided reluctantly, and the game wasrestarted.
The Bargees' match was a curious institution. Their real name was theOld Crockfordians. When, a few years before, the St Austin's secretaryhad received a challenge from them, dated from Stapleton, where theirsecretary happened to reside, he had argued within himself as follows:'This sounds all right. Old Crockfordians? Never heard of Crockford.Probably some large private school somewhere. Anyhow, they're certainto be decent fellows.' And he arranged the fixture. It then transpiredthat Old Crockford was a village, and, from the appearance of the teamon the day of battle, the Old Crockfordians seemed to be composedexclusively of the riff-raff of same. They wore green shirts with abright yellow leopard over the heart, and C.F.C. woven in large lettersabout the chest. One or two of the outsides played in caps, and theteam to a man criticized the referee's decisions with point andpungency. Unluckily, the first year saw a weak team of Austiniansrather badly beaten, with the result that it became a point of honourto wipe this off the slate before the fixture could be cut out of thecard. The next year was also unlucky. The Bargees managed to score apenalty goal in the first half, and won on that. The match resulted ina draw in the following season, and by this time the thing had becomean annual event.
Now, however, the School was getting some of its own back. The Bargeeshad brought down a player of some reputation from the North, and wereas strong as ever in the scrum. But St Austin's had a great team, andwere carrying all before them. Charteris and Graham at half had theball out to their centres in a way which made Merevale, who lookedafter the football of the School, feel that life was worth living. Andwhen once it was out, things happened rapidly. MacArthur, the captainof the team, with Thomson as his fellow-centre, and Welch and Bannisteron the wings, did what they liked with the Bargees' three-quarters. Allthe School outsides had scored, even the back, who dropped a neat goal.The player from the North had scarcely touched the ball during thewhole game, and altogether the Bargees were becoming restless andexcited.
The kick-off from the twenty-five line which followed upon the smalldiscussion alluded to above, reached Graham. Under ordinarycircumstances he would have kicked, but in a winning game originalmethods often pay. He dodged a furious sportsman in green and yellow,and went away down the touch-line. He was almost through when hestumbled. He recovered himself, but too late. Before he could pass,someone was on him. Graham was not heavy, and his opponent wasmuscular. He was swung off his feet, and the next moment the two camedown together, Graham underneath. A sharp pain shot through hisshoulder.
A doctor emerged from the crowd--there is always a doctor in acrowd--and made an examination.
'Anything bad?' asked the referee.
'Collar-bone,' said the doctor. 'The usual, you know. Rather badlysmashed. Nothing dangerous, of course. Be all right in a month or so.Stop his playing. Rather a pity. Much longer before half-time?'
'No. I was just going to blow the whistle when this happened.'
The injured warrior was carried off, and the referee blew his whistlefor half-time.
'I say, Charteris,' said MacArthur, 'who the deuce am I to put halfinstead of Graham?'
'Rogers used to play half in his childhood, I believe. But, I say, didyou ever see such a scrag? Can't you protest, or something?'
'My dear chap, how can I? It's on our own ground. These Bargee beastsare visitors, if you come to think of it. I'd like to wring the chap'sneck who did it. I didn't spot who it was. Did you see?'
'Rather. Their secretary. That man with the beard. I'll get Prescott tomark him this half.'
Prescott was the hardest tackler in the School. He accepted thecommission cheerfully, and promised to do his best by the bearded one.
Charteris certainly gave him every opportunity. When he threw the ballout of touch, he threw it neatly to the criminal with the beard, andPrescott, who stuck to him closer than a brother, had generally tackledhim before he knew what had happened. After a time he began to growthoughtful, and when there was a line-out went and stood among thethree-quarters. In this way much of Charteris's righteous retributionmiscarried, but once or twice he had the pleasure and privilege ofputting in a piece of tackling on his own account. The match ended withthe enemy still intact, but considerably shaken. He was also ratherannoyed. He spoke to Charteris on the subject as they were leaving thefield.
'I was watching you,' he said, _apropos_ of nothing apparently.
'That must have been nice for you,' said Charteris.
'You wait.'
'Certainly. Any time you're passing, I'm sure--'
'You ain't 'eard the last of me yet.'
'That's something of a blow,' said Charteris cheerfully, and theyparted.
Charteris, having got into his blazer, ran after Welch and MacArthur,and walked back with them to the House. All three of them were atMerevale's.
'Poor old Tony,' said MacArthur. 'Where have they taken him to? TheHouse?'
'Yes,' said Welch. 'I say, Babe, you ought to scratch this match nextyear. Tell 'em the card's full up or something.'
'Oh, I don't know. One expects fairly rough play in this sort of game.After all, we tackle pretty hard ourselves. I know I always try and gomy hardest. If the man happens to be brittle, that's his lookout,'concluded the bloodthirsty Babe.
'My dear man,' said Charteris, 'there's all the difference between adecent tackle and a bally scrag like the one that doubled Tony up. Youcan't break a chap's collar-bone without trying to.'
'Well, if you come to think of it, I suppose the man must have beenfairly riled. You can't expect a man to be in an angelic temper whenhis side's been licked by thirty points.'
The Babe was one of those thoroughly excellent persons who always try,when possible, to make allowances for everybody.
'Well, dash it,' said Charteris indignantly, 'if he had lost his hairhe might have drawn the line at falling on Tony like that. It wasn'tthe tackling part of it that crocked him. The beast simply jumped onhim like a Hooligan. Anyhow, I made him sit up a bit before wefinished. I gave Prescott the tip to mark him out of touch. Have youever been collared by Prescott? It's a liberal education. Now, thereyou are, you see. Take Prescott. He's never crocked a man seriously inhis life. I don't count being winded. That's absolutely an accident.Well, there you are, then. Prescott weighs thirteen-ten, and he's allmuscle, and he goes like a battering-ram. You'll own that. He goes ashard as he jolly well knows how, and yet the worst he has ever done isto lay a man out for a couple of minutes while he gets his wind back.Well, compare him with this Bargee man. The Bargee weighs a stone lessand isn't nearly as strong, and yet he smashes Tony's collar-bone. It'sall very well, Babe, but you can't get away from it. Prescott tacklesfairly and the Bargee scrags.'
'Yes,' said MacArthur, 'I suppose you're right.'
'Rather,' said Charteris. 'I wish I'd broken his neck.'
'By the way,' said Welch, 'you were talking to him after the match.What was he saying?'
Charteris laughed.
'By Jove, I'd forgotten; he said I hadn't heard the last of him, andthat I was to wait.'
'What did you say?'
'Oh, I behaved beautifully. I asked him to be sure and look in any timehe was passing, and after a few chatty remarks we parted.'
'I wonder if he meant anything.'
'I believe he means to waylay me with a buckled belt. I shan't stir outexcept with the Old Man or some other competent bodyguard. "'Orrib
leoutrage, shocking death of a St Austin's schoolboy." It would lookrather well on the posters.'
Welch stuck strenuously to the point.
'No, but, look here, Charteris,' he said seriously, 'I'm not rotting.You see, the man lives in Stapleton, and if he knows anything of Schoolrules--'
'Which he doesn't probably. Why should he? Well?'--'If he knowsanything of the rules, he'll know that Stapleton's out of bounds, andhe may book you there and run you in to Merevale.'
'Yes,' said MacArthur. 'I tell you what, you'd do well to knock off afew of your expeditions to Stapleton. You know you wouldn't go thereonce a month if it wasn't out of bounds. You'll be a prefect next term.I should wait till then, if I were you.'
'My dear chap, what does it matter? The worst that can happen to youfor breaking bounds is a couple of hundred lines, and I've got acapital of four hundred already in stock. Besides, things would be soslow if you always kept in bounds. I always feel like a cross betweenDick Turpin and Machiavelli when I go to Stapleton. It's an awfullyjolly feeling. Like warm treacle running down your back. It's cheap attwo hundred lines.'
'You're an awful fool,' said Welch, rudely but correctly.
Welch was a youth who treated the affairs of other people rather tooseriously. He worried over them. This is not a particularly commontrait in the character of either boy or man, but Welch had it highlydeveloped. He could not probably have explained exactly why he wasworried, but he undoubtedly was. Welch had a very grave and seriousmind. He shared a study with Charteris--for Charteris, though not yet aSchool-prefect, was part owner of a study--and close observation hadconvinced him that the latter was not responsible for his actions, andthat he wanted somebody to look after him. He had therefore electedhimself to the post of a species of modified and unofficial guardianangel to him. The duties were heavy, and the remuneration exceedinglylight.
'Really, you know,' said MacArthur, 'I don't see what the point of allyour lunacy is. I don't know if you're aware of it, but the Old Man'sgetting jolly sick with you.'
'I didn't know,' said Charteris, 'but I'm very glad to hear it. Forhist! I have a ger-rudge against the person. Beneath my ban that mysticman shall suffer, _coute que coute_, Matilda. He sat uponme--publicly, and the resultant blot on my scutcheon can only be wipedout with blood, or broken rules,' he added.
This was true. To listen to Charteris on the subject, one might havethought that he considered the matter rather amusing than otherwise.This, however, was simply due to the fact that he treated everythingflippantly in conversation. But, like the parrot, he thought the more.The actual _casus belli_ had been trivial. At least the merespectator would have considered it trivial. It had happened after thisfashion. Charteris was a member of the School corps. The orderly-roomof the School corps was in the junior part of the School buildings.Charteris had been to replace his rifle in that shrine of Mars after amid-day drill, and on coming out into the passage had found himself inthe middle of a junior school 'rag' of the conventional type.Somebody's cap had fallen off, and two hastily picked teams wereplaying football with it (Association rules). Now, Charteris was not aprefect (that, it may be observed in passing, was another source ofbitterness in him towards the Powers, for he was fairly high up in theSixth, and others of his set, Welch, Thomson, and Tony Graham, who werealso in the Sixth--the two last below him in form order--had alreadyreceived their prefects' caps). Not being a prefect, it would have beenofficious in him to have stopped the game. So he was passing on withwhat Mr Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., would have termed a beamingsimper of indescribable suavity, when a member of one of the opposingteams, in effecting a G. O. Smithian dribble, cannoned into him. Topreserve his balance--this will probably seem a very thin line ofdefence, but 'I state but the facts'--he grabbed at the disciple ofSmith amidst applause, and at that precise moment a new actor appearedon the scene--the Headmaster. Now, of all the things that lay in hisprovince, the Headmaster most disliked to see a senior 'ragging' with ajunior. He had a great idea of the dignity of the senior school, anddid all that in him lay to see that it was kept up. The greater numberof the juniors with whom the senior was found ragging, the more heinousthe offence. Circumstantial evidence was dead against Charteris. To alloutward appearances he was one of the players in the impromptu footballmatch. The soft and fascinating beams of the simper, to quote MrJabberjee once more, had not yet faded from the act. A well-chosen wordor two from the Headmagisterial lips put a premature end to thefootball match, and Charteris was proceeding on his way when theHeadmaster called him. He stopped. The Headmaster was angry. So angry,indeed, that he did what in a more lucid interval he would not havedone. He hauled a senior over the coals in the hearing of a number ofjuniors, one of whom (unidentified) giggled loudly. As Charteris had onprevious occasions observed, the Old Man, when he did start to take aperson's measure, didn't leave out much. The address was not long, butit covered a great deal of ground. The section of it which chieflyrankled in Charteris's mind, and which had continued to rankle eversince, was that in which the use of the word 'buffoon' had occurred.Everybody who has a gift of humour and (very naturally) enjoysexercising it, hates to be called a buffoon. It was Charteris's oneweak spot. Every other abusive epithet in the language slid off himwithout penetrating or causing him the least discomfort. The word'buffoon' went home, right up to the hilt. And, to borrow from MrJabberjee for positively the very last time, he had observed(mentally): 'Henceforward I will perpetrate heaps of the lowest dregsof vice.' He had, in fact, started a perfect bout of breaking rules,simply because they were rules. The injustice of the thing rankled. Noone so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might havebeen punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had onlybeen found out. To a certain extent, Charteris ran amok. He brokebounds and did little work, and--he was beginning gradually to findthis out--got thoroughly tired of it all. Offended dignity, however,still kept him at it, and much as he would have preferred to haveresumed a less feverish type of existence, he did not do so.
'I have a ger-rudge against the man,' he said.
'You _are_ an idiot, really,' said Welch.
'Welch,' said Charteris, by way of explanation to MacArthur, 'is a ladof coarse fibre. He doesn't understand the finer feelings. He can't seethat I am doing this simply for the Old Man's good. Spare the rod,spile the choild. Let's go and have a look at Tony when we're changed.He'll be in the sick-room if he's anywhere.'
'All right,' said the Babe, as he went into his study. 'Buck up. I'lltoss you for first bath in a second.'
Charteris walked on with Welch to their sanctum.
'You know,' said Welch seriously, stooping to unlace his boots,'rotting apart, you really are a most awful ass. I wish I could get youto see it.'
'Never you mind, ducky,' said Charteris, 'I'm all right. I'll lookafter myself.'
Tales of St. Austin's Page 14