Complete Works of E W Hornung
Page 351
Once, in the very oldest days, when the pretty boy and the stable brat were playing together for almost the first time, the boy had broken a window and begged the brat to father the crime. Jan would not have told Chips for worlds; indeed, he was very sorry to have recalled so dim an incident out of the dead past; but there it was, unbidden, and here was the same inveterate abhorrence, not so much of actual punishment, but of being put in an unfavourable light in the eyes of others. That was a distinctive trait of Evan’s, peculiar only in its intensity. Both his old companions were equally reminded of it now. But Jan’s was the hard position! To have got in touch with Evan at last, to admire him as he always had and would, and yet to have that admiration promptly tempered by this gratuitous exhibition of a radical fault! Though he put it to himself in simpler fashion, this was Jan’s chief trouble, and it would have been bad enough just then without the necessity that he foresaw of choosing between Chips and Evan.
“I don’t know about duty,” he temporised, “but I don’t believe we should be licked.”
“Of course we shouldn’t!” cried Chips. “But it wouldn’t kill us if we were.”
“You agree with him?” persisted Evan, in a threatening voice of which the meaning was not lost on Jan. It meant out-of-touch again in no time, and for good!
“I don’t know,” sighed Jan. “I suppose we ought to say what we’ve seen; and it’ll pay us, too, if it’s going to get out anyhow; but I do think it’s hard on you — Devereux. We dragged you into it. You never wanted to come in; you said so over and over.” Jan gloomed and glowered, then brightened in a flash. “Look here! I vote us two tell Heriot what we’ve seen, Chips! Most likely he won’t ask if we were by ourselves; he’s sure to think we were. If he does ask, we can say there was another chap, but we’d rather not mention his name, because he was dead against the whole thing, and never saw all we did!”
Jan had unfolded his bright idea directly to Carpenter, whose opinion he awaited with evident anxiety. He resented being placed like this between the old friend and the new, and having to side with one or the other, especially when he himself could not see that it mattered so very much which course they took. They could not bring the dead man back to life. On the whole he supposed that Chips was right; but Jan would have held his tongue with Evan against any other fellow in the school. It was the new friend, however, who had been the true friend these two terms, and it was not in Jan’s body to go against him now, though he would have given a bit of it to feel otherwise.
“If that’s good enough for Devereux,” said Chips, dryly, “it’s good enough for me. But I’m blowed if I could sleep till that poor chap’s cut down!”
Devereux now became far from sure that it was good enough for him; in fact he declared nearly all the way back that he would own up with the others, that they must stand or fall together, even if he himself was more sinned against than sinning. That was not indeed the expression he used, but the schoolboy paraphrase was pretty close, and his companions did not take it up. Chips, having gained his point, was content to look volumes of unspoken criticism, while Jan felt heartily sick of the whole discussion. He was prepared to do or to suffer what was necessary or inevitable, but for his part he had talked enough about it in advance.
Evan, however, would not drop the subject until they found the familiar street looking cynically sleepy and serene, the same and yet subtly altered to those young eyes seared with a horror to be fully realised only by degrees. It began to come home to them now, in the region of other black caps with red badges, and faces that met theirs curiously, as though they showed what they had seen. Their experience was indeed settling over them like a blight, and two of the trio had forgotten all about the consequences when the third blushed up and hesitated at Heriot’s corner.
“Of course,” he stammered, “if you found, after all, that you really were able to keep my name out of it, I should be awfully thankful to you both, because I never should have put my nose into the beastly place alone. But if it’s going to get you fellows into any hotter water I’ll come forward like a shot.”
“Noble fellow!” murmured Carpenter as the pair turned into their quad.
“You shut up!” Jan muttered back. “I’ve a jolly good mind not to open my own mouth either!”
But he did, and in the event there was no call upon Evan’s nobility. Heriot knew that the two boys who came to him after dinner were always about together, and he was too much disturbed by what they told him to ask if they had been alone as usual. He took that for granted, in the communications which he lost no time in making both to the police and to the Head Master, who took it for granted in his turn when the pair came to his study in the School House. He was very stern with them, but not unkind. They had broken bounds, and richly deserved the flogging he would have given them if their terrible experience were not a punishment in itself; it was indeed a very severe one to Carpenter, who was by this time utterly unstrung; but Rutter, who certainly looked unmoved, was reminded that this was the second time he had escaped his deserts for a serious offence, and he was grimly warned against a third. If they wished to signify their appreciation of his clemency, the old man added, they would both hold their tongues about the whole affair.
And the two boys entered into a compact to that effect between themselves, though not without considerable reluctance on the part of poor Chips, who felt that he was locking up the conversational capital of a school lifetime. Yet within a week the adventure was being talked about, and that despite the fact that the Chief Constable of the county, an old friend of Heriot’s, had prevailed upon the County Coroner to dispense with the actual evidence of either boy.
Jan asked Chips if he had told anybody, only to meet with an indignant denial.
“I’ve never said a word, my good Tiger!”
“Well, I haven’t, that’s a sure thing.”
“Then it must be Devereux.”
“I thought you’d say that,” said Jan, but kept his ears open in form, and actually overheard Evan boasting of the adventure before Haigh came in. Moreover, as he was not questioned about it himself, Jan was forced to the conclusion that Evan was acting on the principle of one good turn deserving another, and leaving out every name but his own.
“Well?” asked Chips when next they met.
“Well, I’m afraid you’re right; and I don’t know what to think of it,” said poor Jan, hiding his feelings as best he could.
“I won’t say what I think,” returned Chips.
And he never did.
CHAPTER XIV. “SUMMER-TERM”
“O Summer-Term, sweet to the Cricketer, whose very existence is bliss;
O Summer-Term, sweet to the Editor, who needs write but two numbers of this — —”
“But he doesn’t write them,” objected Jan, “any more than the captain of a side makes all the runs.”
“Oh! I know it should be ‘edit,’ but that doesn’t scan,” explained Chips, and continued:
“O Summer-Term, sweet to the sportsman, who makes a good book on the Oaks — —”
“Why the Oaks?” interrupted Jan again. “Why not the Derby, while you are about it?”
Chips told him he would see, confound him!
“O Summer-Term, sweet to the Jester, who’s plenty of food for his jokes!”
“I see; but not enough rhymes for them, eh?”
“That’s about it, I suppose.”
Chips was laughing, though Jan was just a little too sardonic for him, as had often been the case of late. The scene was the poet’s study, and the time after lock-up on a Sunday evening, when the friends always sat together until prayers. The tardy shades of early June were intensified by the opaque window overlooking the road and only opening at the top. Chips had his candles burning, and the minute den that he kept so spick and span, with its plush frames brushed, and its little pictures seldom out of the horizontal, looked quite fascinating in the two dim lights. The poet, looking the part in pince-nez started in the Easter holid
ays, was seated at his table; the critic lounged in the folding chair with the leg-rest up and a bag of biscuits in his lap.
The evolution of the Poet Chips was no novelty to Jan, who had been watching the phenomenon ever since Chips had received a Handsome Book as second prize for his “The school-bell tolls the knell of parting play,” in a parody competition in Every Boy’s Magazine. That secret triumph had occurred in their first term, and Chips had promptly forwarded a companion effort (“In her ear he whispers thickly”) to the School “Mag.,” in which it was publicly declined with something more than thanks. “C. —— Your composition shows talent, but tends to vulgarity, especially towards the end. Choose a more lofty subject, and try again!” C. did both without delay, in a shipwreck lay (“The sea was raging with boisterous roar”) which impressed Jan deeply, but only elicited “C. —— Very sorry to discourage you, but — —” in the February number. Discouraged poor C. had certainly been, but not more than was now the case under the grim sallies of his own familiar friend.
It was really too bad of Jan, whose Easter holidays had been redeemed by a week of bliss at the Carpenters’ nice house near London. The two boys had done exactly what they liked — kept all hours — seen a play or two, besides producing one themselves (“Alone in the Pirates’ Lair”) in a toy theatre which showed the child in old Chips alongside the precocious poetaster. But even Jan had printed programmes and shifted scenes with a zest unworthy of the heavier criticism.
“Go it, Chips!” cried the critic through half a biscuit. “It’s first-class; let’s have some more.”
But Chips only went it for another couplet: —
“When ’tis joy on one’s rug to be basking, and watching a match on the Upper,
When the works of J. Lillywhite, junior, rank higher than those of one Tupper — —”
“Who’s he when he’s at home?” inquired the relentless Jan.
“Oh, dash it all, you want to know too much! You’re as bad as the old man; last time our form showed up verses to him I’d got Olympus, meaning sky. ‘Who’s your friend Olympus?’ says Jerry, with a jab of his joiner’s pencil. And now you say the same about poor old Tupper!”
“I didn’t; but who is your friend Tupper?”
“He’s no friend of mine,” explained candid Chips, “but I’d a good rhyme ready for him, so he came in handy, like my old pal Olympus at the end of a hexameter. I expect he’s some old penny-a-liner. ‘Tupper and Tennyson, Daniel Defoe,’ as the song says.”
Chips might or might not have been able to say what song he meant. His mind was full of the assorted smatterings of an omnivorous but desultory reader, and he never had time to tidy it like his study. He sat pinching the soft rim of one of the candles into a chalice that overflowed and soused his fingers in hot grease. He was not going to read any more aloud, because he knew what rot it all was; but there Jan warmly contradicted him, until he was allowed to listen to the rest like a better friend.
Yet just then Jan was not at his best as friend or companion; and it did rather try his temper to have to listen to fulsome numbers on a sore subject.
“An ode to the balmiest season endowed us by Nature’s decree,
A wild panegyric in praise of the jolliest term of the three!”
So Chips chose to characterise his doggerel and its theme; but as he rarely made a run at cricket, and was always upset about it, Jan could not think why. He only knew it was not “the jolliest term of the three” for him, but quite the unluckiest so far, despite the fact that he was free at last from the clutches of Mr. Haigh. It was out of school that the bad luck of his first term had repeated itself in aggravated form; his cricket had been knocked on the head even quicker than his football.
Cricket in a public school is a heavy sorrow to the average neophyte; if he goes with a reputation, he will get his chance; unknown talent has to wait for it, mere ardour is simply swamped. Jan had not only no reputation, but no private school where he could say that he had played the game. He did not know he was a cricketer, nor was he at that time any such thing; but he was a natural left-hand bowler. He began the term talking about “notches” instead of runs, “scouting” instead of fielding, and a “full” ball when he meant a fast one. Once he even said “cuddy-handed” for “left-handed,” in speaking of his own bowling to Chips. Luckily they were alone at the time. Chips was shocked to find his friend so unversed in the very alphabet of cricket, and began coaching him out of Lillywhite without delay. Yet the first three balls which Jan delivered, at their first net, did an informal hat-trick at the expense of the theoretical exponent of the game.
Chips, having had his stumps disturbed a great many times on that occasion, went about talking more generously than wisely of the Tiger’s prowess with the ball; for he was already accounted a bit of a windbag about the game, and his personal ineptitude soon found him out. Chips had put his name down for the Lower Ground, and Jan his for the adjoining Middle, owing to his decidedly superior stature. But there were plenty of lusty louts on the Middle, and Jan had to go some days without a game; when he got one he was not put on to bowl; and May was well advanced before he found himself taking wickets in the second Middle game.
It was Shockley of all people who had tossed the ball to him, with a characteristic reference to poor Chips’s vicarious bragging. “That young lubber Carpenter says you can bowl a bit; if you can’t I’ll give the ruddy little liar the biggest licking he’s ever had in his life!” It was significant that Jan himself was not threatened with violence; but perhaps it was the Shocker’s subtlety that devised the surest means of putting the new bowler on his mettle. The fact remains that Jan shambled up to the wicket, gave an ungainly twiddle of the left arm, and delivered a ball that removed the leg bail after pitching outside the off stump.
The defeated batsman proceeded to make a less creditable stand than the one the Tiger had broken up. “I’m not going,” said he, without stirring from the crease.
“You jolly well are!” thundered Shockley, who was first captain of the game. “The umpire didn’t give it a no-ball, did he?”
“No, and he didn’t give me guard, either. New guard for a left-hand bowler, if you don’t mind, Shockley; you should have said he was one.”
“I’m blowed if I knew,” replied the Shocker, truly enough, and turned from the other big fellow to the luckless bowler. “Why the blue blazes didn’t you tell us, Rutter?”
“I never thought of it, Shockley.”
Curses descended on Jan’s head; but the batsman would have to go. The batsman stuck to his crease. The umpires, as usual the two next men in, had a singular point to settle; one gave it “out” with indecent promptitude, and so off with his coat; the other umpire, a younger boy in the batsman’s house, was not so sure.
Jan offered a rash solution of the difficulty.
“Suppose I bowl him out again?” he suggested with the dryest brand of startling insolence.
“I don’t know your beastly name,” cried the batsman, “but you’ll know more about me when the game’s over.”
“Quite right,” said Shockley; “it’ll do the young lubber all the good in the world.” And partly because the batsman was an even bigger fellow than himself, partly out of open spite against Jan, the Shocker allowed the game to proceed.
The batsman took fresh guard, and Jan his shambling run. This time the ball seemed well off the wicket, and the batsman took a vindictive slash, only to find his off stump mown down.
“You put me off, you devil!” he cried, shaking his bat at Jan; but this time he did retire, to vow a vengeance which in the event he was man enough not to take. For the formidable Tiger had secured the remaining wickets at a nominal cost.
In any other game, on any one of the three grounds, such a performance would have led to the player’s immediate promotion to the game above; but Shockley managed to keep Jan down, and on his own side, over the next half-holiday, when another untoward event marked the progress of the second Middle game.
He went dripping to the doctor who had falsely convicted him of a heart. That practitioner was out, and the dripping ceased before he came in; so he washed nothing, but strapped the two fingers together in their drying blood, and in the next three weeks they grew almost into one. The greater part of that time Jan carried his arm in a sling, and the days were full of ironies not incorporated by Chips in his gushing pæan. House matches began, and in the Under Sixteen Heriot’s were promptly defeated by a side which must have perished before a decent bowler; in the All Ages, in spite of Charles Cave and the runs he could not help making in house matches, they only survived one round; and Chips would have it that even there Jan would just have made the difference. It is right to add that the rest of the house did not realise their loss, though Shockley might have made them if he had chosen. Then the Elevens came out, and Jan was not even in the Fifth Middle, then the lowest on the ground; Chips just scraped into the Fourth Lower, the lowest Eleven of all, and one for which (to his grief) no cap was given.
Founder’s Day came with the Old Boys’ Match, and a galaxy of gay and brilliant young men, from whom a very good side was chosen to do battle against the school; and Founder’s Day was a whole holiday, when you were free to take your rug to the Upper directly after chapel. Jan took his ball as well, because his arm was out of a sling, though he was still forbidden to play in a game. That did not prevent him from bowling to one of the long line of cricketers who stuck single stumps down the length of the white palings that bounded the ground on one side. Volunteer batteries bombarded each, but Jan’s batsman eventually requested the other volunteers to wait while the left-hander gave him a little practice. And after that (but not before the single stump had been laid low once) the Old Boy asked Jan his name, and why he was not bowling for the school; it is true that he was laughing as he spoke, and a knot of listeners laughed louder, which sent Jan off to his rug in some little dudgeon.