The Complete Stalky & Co

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘Put him away,’ said Stalky. ‘Bring on Campbell. Now this is bullyin’. Oh, I forgot! I say, Campbell, what did you bully Clewer for? Take out his gag and let him answer.’

  ‘I—I don’t know. Oh, let me off! I swear I’ll make it pax. Don’t “rock” me!’

  ‘ “The bleatin’ of the kid excites the tiger.” He says he don’t know. Set him up, Beetle. Give me the glove an’ put in the gag.’

  In silence Campbell was ‘rocked’ sixty-four times.

  ‘I believe I’m goin’ to die!’ he gasped.

  ‘He says he is goin’ to die. Put him away. Now, Sefton! Oh, I forgot! Sefton, what did you bully Clewer for?’

  The answer is unprintable; but it brought not the faintest flush to Stalky’s downy cheek.

  ‘Make him an Ag Ag, Turkey!’

  And an Ag Ag was he made, forthwith. The hard-bought experience of nearly eighteen years was at his disposal, but he did not seem to appreciate it.

  ‘He says we are sweeps. Put him away! Now, Campbell! Oh, I forgot! I say, Campbell, what did you bully Clewer for?’

  Then came the tears—scalding tears; appeals for mercy and abject promises of peace. Let them cease the tortures and Campbell would never lift hand against them. The questions began again—to an accompaniment of keen persuasions.

  ‘You seem hurt, Campbell. Are you hurt?’

  ‘Yes. Awfully!’

  ‘He says he is hurt. Are you broke?’

  ‘Yes, yes! I swear I am. Oh, stop!’

  ‘He says he is broke. Are you humble?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘He says he is humble. Are you devilish humble?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘He says he is devilish humble. Will you bully Clewer any more?’

  ‘No. No—ooh!’

  ‘He says he won’t bully Clewer. Or any one else?’

  ‘No. I swear I won’t!’

  ‘Or any one else. What about the lickin’ you and Sefton were goin’ to give us?’

  ‘I won’t! I won’t! I swear I won’t!’

  ‘He says he won’t lick us. Do you esteem yourself to know anything about bullyin’?’

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  ‘He says he doesn’t know anything about bullyin’. Haven’t we taught you a lot?’

  ‘Yes—yes!’

  ‘He says we’ve taught him a lot. Aren’t you grateful?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘He says he is grateful. Put him away. Oh, I forgot! I say, Campbell, what did you bully Clewer for?’

  He wept anew; his nerves being raw. ‘Because I was a bully. I suppose that’s what you want me to say?’

  ‘He says he is a bully. Right he is. Put him in the corner. No more japes for Campbell. Now, Sefton!’

  ‘You devils! You young devils!’ This and much more as Sefton was punted across the carpet by skilful knees.

  ‘ “The bleatin’ of the kid excites the tiger.” We’re goin’ to make you beautiful. Where does he keep his shaving-things? [Campbell told.] Beetle, get some water. Turkey, make the lather. We’re goin’ to shave you, Seffy, so you’d better lie jolly still, or you’ll get cut. I’ve never shaved any one before.’

  ‘Don’t! Oh, don’t! Please don’t!

  ‘Gettin’ polite, eh? I’m only goin’ to take off one ducky little whisker——’

  ‘I’ll—I’ll make it pax, if you don’t. I swear I’ll let you off your lickin’ when I get up!’

  ‘And half that moustache we’re so proud of. He says he’ll let us off our lickin’. Isn’t he kind?’

  M‘Turk laughed into the nickel-plated shaving-cup, and settled Sefton’s head between Stalky’s vice-like knees.

  ‘Hold on a shake,’ said Beetle, ‘you can’t shave long hairs. You’ve got to cut all that moustache short first, an’ then scrope him.’

  ‘Well, I’m not goin’ to hunt about for scissors. Won’t a match do? Chuck us the match-box. He is a hog, you know; we might as well singe him. Lie still!’

  He lit a vesta, but checked his hand. ‘I only want to take off half, though.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Beetle waved the brush. ‘I’ll lather up to the middle—see? and you can burn off the rest.’

  The thin-haired first moustache of youth fluffed off in flame to the lather-line in the centre of the lip, and Stalky rubbed away the burnt stumpage with his thumb. It was not a very gentle shave, but it abundantly accomplished its purpose.

  ‘Now the whisker on the other side. Turn him over!’ Between match and razor this, too, was removed. ‘Give him his shaving-glass. Take the gag out. I want to hear what he’ll say.’

  But there were no words. Sefton gazed at the lop-sided wreck in horror and despair. Two fat tears rolled down his cheek.

  ‘Oh, I forgot! I say, Sefton, what did you bully Clewer for?’

  ‘Leave me alone! Oh, you infernal bullies, leave me alone! Haven’t I had enough!’

  ‘He says we must leave him alone,’ said M‘Turk.

  ‘He says we are bullies, an’ we haven’t even begun yet,’ said Beetle. ‘You’re ungrateful, Seffy. Golly! You do look an atrocity and a half!’

  ‘He says he has had enough,’ said Stalky. ‘He errs!’

  ‘Well, to work, to work!’ chanted M‘Turk, waving a stump. ‘Come on, my giddy Narcissus. Don’t fall in love with your own reflection!’*

  ‘Oh, let him off,’ said Campbell from his corner; ‘he’s blubbing, too.’

  Sefton cried like a twelve-year-old with pain, shame, wounded vanity, and utter helplessness.

  ‘You’ll make it pax, Sefton, won’t you? You can’t stand up to those young devils—’

  ‘Don’t be rude, Campbell, de-ah,’ said M‘Turk, ‘or you’ll catch it again!’

  ‘You are devils, you know,’ said Campbell.

  ‘What? for a little bullyin’—same as you’ve been givin’ Clewer! How long have you been jestin’ with him?’ said Stalky. ‘All this term?’

  ‘We didn’t always knock him about, though!’

  ‘You did when you could catch him,’ said Beetle, crosslegged on the floor, dropping a stump from time to time across Sefton’s instep. ‘Don’t I know it!’

  ‘I—perhaps we did.’

  ‘And you went out of your way to catch him? Don’t I know it! Because he was an awful little beast, eh? Don’t I know it! Now, you see you’re awful beasts, and you’re gettin’ what he got—for bein’ a beast. Just because we choose.’

  ‘We never really bullied him—like you’ve done us.’

  ‘Yah!’ said Beetle. ‘They never really bully—“Molly” Fairburn didn’t. Only knock ’em about a little bit. That’s what they say. Only kick their souls out of ’em, and they go and blub in the box-rooms. Shove their heads into the ulsters an’ blub. Write home three times a day—yes, you brute, I’ve done that—askin’ to be taken away. You’ve never been bullied properly, Campbell. I’m sorry you made pax.’

  ‘I’m not!’ said Campbell, who was a humorist in a way. ‘Look out, you’re slaying Sefton!’

  In his excitement Beetle had used the stump unreflectingly, and Sefton was now shouting for mercy.

  ‘An’ you!’ he cried, wheeling where he sat. ‘You’ve never been bullied, either. Where were you before you came here?’

  ‘I—I had a tutor.’

  ‘Yah! You would. You never blubbed in your life. But you’re blubbin’ now, by gum. Aren’t you blubbin’?’

  ‘Can’t you see, you blind beast?’ Sefton fell over sideways, tear-tracks furrowing the dried lather. Crack came the cricket-stump on the curved latter-end of him.

  ‘Blind, am I,’ said Beetle, ‘and a beast? Shut up, Stalky. I’m goin’ to jape a bit with our friend, à la “Molly” Fairburn. I think I can see. Can’t I see, Sefton?’

  ‘The point is well taken,’ said M‘Turk, watching the stump at work. ‘You’d better say that he sees, Seffy.’

  ‘You do—you can! I swear you do!’ yelled Sefton, for strong arguments were coerc
ing him.

  ‘Aren’t my eyes lovely?’ The stump rose and fell steadily throughout this catechism.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A gentle hazel, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes—oh yes!’

  ‘What a liar you are! They’re sky-blue. Ain’t they sky-blue?’

  ‘Yes—oh yes!’

  ‘You don’t know your mind from one minute to another. You must learn—you must learn.’

  ‘What a bait you’re in!’ said Stalky. ‘Keep your hair on, Beetle.’

  ‘I’ve had it done to me,’ said Beetle. ‘Now—about my being a beast.’

  ‘Pax—oh, pax!* cried Sefton; ‘make it pax. I’ll give up! Let me off! I’m broke! I can’t stand it!’

  ‘Ugh! Just when we were gettin’ our hand in!’ grunted M‘Turk. ‘They didn’t let Clewer off, I’ll swear.’

  ‘Confess—apologise—quick!’ said Stalky.

  From the floor Sefton made unconditional surrender, more abjectly even than Campbell. He would never touch any one again. He would go softly all the days of his life.

  ‘We’ve got to take it, I suppose?’ said Stalky. ‘All right, Sefton. You’re broke? Very good. Shut up, Beetle! But before we let you up, you an’ Campbell will kindly oblige us with “Kitty of Coleraine”—à la Clewer.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ said Campbell; ‘we’ve surrendered.’

  ‘’Course you have. Now you’re goin’ to do what we tell you—same as Clewer would. If you hadn’t surrendered you’d ha’ been really bullied. Havin’ surrendered—do you follow, Seffy?—you sing odes in honour of the conquerors. Hurry up!’

  They dropped into chairs luxuriously. Campbell and Sefton looked at each other, and, neither taking comfort from that view, struck up ‘Kitty of Coleraine.’

  ‘Vile bad,’ said Stalky, as the miserable wailing ended. ‘If you hadn’t surrendered it would have been our painful duty to buzz books at you for singin’ out o’ tune. Now then.’

  He freed them from their bonds, but for several minutes they could not rise. Campbell was first on his feet, smiling uneasily. Sefton staggered to the table, buried his head in his arms, and shook with sobs. There was no shadow of fight in either—only amazement, distress, and shame.

  ‘Ca—can’t he shave clean before tea, please?’ said Campbell. ‘It’s ten minutes to bell.’

  Stalky shook his head. He meant to escort the half—shaved one to that meal.

  M‘Turk yawned in his chair and Beetle mopped his face. They were all dripping with excitement and exertion.

  ‘If I knew anything about it, I swear I’d give you a moral lecture,’ said Stalky severely.

  ‘Don’t jaw; they’ve surrendered,’ said M‘Turk.

  ‘This moral suasion biznai takes it out of a chap.’

  ‘Don’t you see how gentle we’ve been? We might have called Clewer in to look at you,’ said Stalky. ‘The bleatin’ of the tiger excites the kid. But we didn’t. We’ve only got to tell a few chaps in Coll, about this and you’d be hooted all over the shop. Your life wouldn’t be worth havin’. But we aren’t goin’ to do that, either. We’re strictly moral suasers, Campbell; so, unless you or Seffy split about this, no one will.’

  ‘I swear you’re a brick,’ said Campbell. ‘I suppose I was rather a brute to Clewer,’

  ‘It looked like it,’ said Stalky. ‘But I don’t think Seffy need come into hall with cock-eye whiskers. Horrid bad for the fags if they saw him. He can shave. Ain’t you grateful, Sefton?’

  The head did not lift. Sefton was deeply asleep.

  ‘That’s rummy,’ said M‘Turk, as a snore mixed with a sob. ‘’Cheek, I think; or else he’s shammin’.’

  ‘No, ’tisn’t,’ said Beetle. ‘When “Molly” Fairburn had attended to me for an hour or so I used to go bung off to sleep on a form sometimes. Poor devil! But he called me a beastly poet, though.’

  ‘Well, come on.’ Stalky lowered his voice. ‘Good-bye, Campbell. ’Member, if you don’t talk, nobody will.’

  There should have been a war-dance, but that all three were so utterly tired that they almost went to sleep above the teacups in their study, and slept till prep.

  * * * * *

  ‘A most extraordinary letter. Are all parents incurably mad? What do you make of it?’ said the Head, handing a closely-written eight pages to the Reverend John.

  ‘ “The only son of his mother, and she a widow.”* That is the least reasonable sort.’ The chaplain read with pursed lips.

  ‘If half those charges are true he should be in the sick-house; whereas he is disgustingly well. Certainly he has shaved. I noticed that.’

  ‘Under compulsion, as his mother points out. How delicious! How salutary!’

  ‘You haven’t to answer her. It isn’t often I don’t know what has happened in Coll.; but this is beyond me.’

  ‘If you asked me I should say seek not to propitiate. When one is forced to take crammers’ pups——’

  ‘He was perfectly well at extra-tuition—with me—this morning,’ said the Head absently. ‘Unusually well—behaved, too.’

  ‘——they either educate the school, or the school, as in this case, educates them. I prefer our own methods,’ the chaplain concluded.

  ‘You think it was that?’ A lift of the Head’s eyebrow.

  ‘I’m sure of it! And nothing excuses his trying to give the Coll, a bad name.’

  ‘That’s the line I mean to take with him,’ the Head answered.

  The Augurs* winked.

  * * * * *

  A few days later the Reverend John called on Number Five. ‘Why haven’t we seen you before, Padre?’ said they.

  ‘I’ve been watching times and seasons and events and men—and boys,’ he replied. ‘I am pleased with my Tenth Legion. I make them my compliments. Clewer was throwing ink—balls in form this morning, instead of doing his work. He is now doing fifty lines for—unheard—of audacity.’

  ‘You can’t blame us, sir,’ said Beetle. ‘You told us to remove the—er—pressure. That’s the worst of a fag.’

  ‘I’ve known boys five years his senior throw ink—balls, Beetle. To such an one have I given two hundred lines—not so long ago. And now I come to think of it, were those lines ever shown up?’

  ‘Were they, Turkey?’ said Beetle unblushingly.

  ‘Don’t you think Clewer looks a little cleaner, Padre?’ Stalky interrupted.

  ‘We’re no end of moral reformers,’ said M‘Turk.

  ‘It was all Stalky, but it was a lark,’ said Beetle.

  ‘I have noticed the moral reform in several quarters. Didn’t I tell you you had more influence than any boys in the Coll, if you cared to use it?’

  ‘It’s a trifle exhaustin’ to use frequent—our kind of moral suasion. Besides, you see, it only makes Clewer cheeky.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of Clewer; I was thinking of—the other people, Stalky.’

  ‘Oh, we didn’t bother much about the other people,’ said M‘Turk. ‘Did we?’

  ‘But I did—from the beginning.’

  ‘Then you knew, sir?’

  A downward puff of smoke.

  ‘Boys educate each other, they say, more than we can or dare. If I had used one half of the moral suasion you may or may not have employed——’

  ‘With the best motives in the world. Don’t forget our pious motives, Padre,’ said M‘Turk.

  ‘I suppose I should be now languishing in Bideford jail, shouldn’t I? Well, to quote the Head, in a little business which we have agreed to forget, that strikes me as flagrant injustice. … What are you laughing at, you young sinners? Isn’t it true? I will not stay to be shouted at. What I looked into this den of iniquity for was to find out if any one cared to come down for a bathe off the Ridge. But I see you won’t.’

  ‘Won’t we, though! Half a shake, Padre Sahib, till we get our towels, and nous sommes avec vous!’

  To the Companions

  Horace, Ode 17, Bk. V.

  How com
es it that, at even-tide,

  When level beams should show most truth,

  Man, failing, takes unfailing pride

  In memories of his frolic youth?

  Venus and Liber* fill their hour;

  The games engage, the law—courts prove;

  Till hardened life breeds love of power

  Or Avarice, Age’s final love.

  Yet at the end, these comfort not—

  Nor any triumph Fate decrees—

  Compared with glorious, unforgot-

  ten innocent enormities

  Of frontless days before the beard,

  When, instant on the casual jest,

  The God Himself of Mirth appeared

  And snatched us to His heaving breast.

  And we—not caring who He was

  But certain He would come again—

  Accepted all He brought to pass

  As Gods accept the lives of men …

  Then He withdrew from sight and speech,

  Nor left a shrine. How comes it now

  While Charon’s* keel grates on the beach,

  He calls so clear: ‘Rememberest thou?’

  The United Idolaters

  Rudyard Kipling

  His name was Brownell and his reign was brief. He came from the Central Anglican Scholastic Agency, a soured, clever, reddish man picked up by the Head at the very last moment of the summer holidays in default of Macrea (of Macrea’s House) who wired from Switzerland that he had smashed a knee mountaineering, and would not be available that term.

  Looking back at the affair, one sees that the Head should have warned Mr. Brownell of the College’s outstanding peculiarity, instead of leaving him to discover it for himself the first day of the term, when he went for a walk to the beach, and saw ‘Potiphar’ Mullins, Head of Games, smoking without conceal on the sands. ‘Pot,’ having the whole of the Autumn Football challenges, acceptances, and Fifteen reconstructions to work out, did not as first comprehend Mr. Brownell’s shrill cry of: ‘You’re smoking! You’re smoking, sir!’ but he removed his pipe, and answered, placably enough: ‘The Army Class is allowed to smoke, sir.’

  Mr. Brownell replied: ‘Preposterous!’