Beetle was understood to say that the only thing he could remember was in French.
‘You add, then, the Gallic tongue to your accomplishments? The information plus the accent? ’Tis well! Admirable Crichton,* proceed!’
And Beetle proceeded with the text of an old Du Maurier* drawing in a back—number of Punch:
‘De tous ces défunts cockolores
Le moral Fénélon,*
Michel Ange et Johnson
(Le Docteur) sont les plus awful bores.’*
To which Howell, wooingly, just above his breath:
‘ “Oh, won’t you come up, come up?” ’*
Result, as the tea-bell rang, one hundred lines, to be shown up at seven-forty-five that evening. This was meant to blast the pleasant summer interval between tea and prep. Howell, a favourite in ‘English’ as well as Latin, got off; but the Army Class crashed in to tea with a new Limerick.
The imposition was a matter of book-keeping, so far as Beetle was concerned; for it was his custom of rainy afternoons to fabricate store of lines in anticipation of just these accidents. They covered such English verse as interested him at the moment, and helped to fix the stuff in his memory. After tea, he drew the required amount from his drawer in Number Five study, thrust it into his pocket, went up to the Head’s house, and settled himself in the big Outer Library where, ever since the Head had taken him off all mathematics, he did précis-work and French translation. Here he buried himself in a close-printed, thickish volume which had been his chosen browse for some time. A hideous account of a hanging, drawing, and quartering had first attracted him to it; but later he discovered the book (Curiosities of Literature* was its name) full of the finest confused feeding—such as forgeries and hoaxes, Italian literary societies, religious and scholastic controversies of old when men (even that most dreary John Milton, of Lycidas) slanged each other, not without dust and heat,* in scandalous pamphlets; personal peculiarities of the great; and a hundred other fascinating inutilities. This evening he fell on a description of wandering, mad Elizabethan beggars, known as Tom-a-Bedlams, with incidental references to Edgar who plays at being a Tom-a-Bedlam in Lear, but whom Beetle did not consider at all funny. Then, at the foot of a left-hand page, leaped out on him a verse—of incommunicable splendour, opening doors into inexplicable worlds—from a song which Tom-a-Bedlams were supposed to sing. It ran:
With a heart of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
With a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney,
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end—
Methinks it is no journey
He sat, mouthing and staring before him, till the prep.-bell rang and it was time to take his lines up to King’s study and lay them, as hot from the press, in the impot-basket* appointed. He carried his dreams on to Number Five. They knew the symptoms of old.
‘Readin’ again,’ said Stalky, like a wife welcoming her spouse from the pot-house.
‘Look here, I’ve found out something——’ Beetle began. ‘Listen——’
‘No, you don’t—till afterwards. It’s Turkey’s prep.’ This meant it was a Horace Ode through which Turkey would take them for a literal translation, and all possible pitfalls. Stalky gave his businesslike attention, but Beetle’s eye was glazed and his mind adrift throughout, and he asked for things to be repeated. So, when Turkey closed the Horace, justice began to be executed.
‘I’m all right,’ he protested, ‘I swear I heard a lot of what Turkey said. Shut up! Oh, shut up! Do shut up, you putrid asses.’ Beetle was speaking from the fender, his head between Turkey’s knees, and Stalky largely over the rest of him.
‘What’s the metre of the beastly thing?’ M‘Turk waved his Horace. ‘Look it up, Stalky. Twelfth of the Third.’*
‘Ionicum a minore,’* Stalky reported, closing his book in turn. ‘Don’t let him forget it’; and Turkey’s Horace marked the metre on Beetle’s skull, with special attention to elisions. It hurt.
‘Miserar’ est neq’ amori dare ludum neque dulci
Mala vino laver aut ex—*
Got it? You liar! You’ve no ear at all! Chorus, Stalky!’
Both Horaces strove to impart the measure, which was altogether different from its accompaniment. Presently Howell dashed in from his study below.
‘Look out! If you make this infernal din we’ll have some one up the staircase in a sec.’
‘We’re teachin’ Beetle Horace. He was goin’ to burble us some muck he’d read,’ the tutors explained.
‘’Twasn’t muck! It was about those Tom-a-Bedlams in Lear.’
‘Oh!’ said Stalky. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’
‘’Cause you didn’t listen. They had drinkin’-horns an’ badges, and there’s a Johnson note on Shakespeare about the meanin’ of Edgar sayin’ “My horn’s dry.” But Johnson’s dead-wrong about it. Aubrey* says——’
‘Who’s Aubrey?’ Howell demanded. ‘Does King know about him?’
‘Dunno. Oh yes, an’ Johnson started to learn Dutch when he was seventy.’
‘What the deuce for?’ Stalky asked.
‘For a change after his Dikker,* I suppose,’ Howell suggested.
‘And I looked up a lot of other English stuff, too. I’m goin’ to try it all on King.’
‘Showin’-off as usual,’ said the acid M‘Turk, who, like his race, lived and loved to destroy illusions.
‘No. For a draw.* He’s an unjust dog! If you read, he says you’re showin’-off. If you don’t, you’re a mark-huntin’ Philistine.* What does he want you to do, curse him?’
‘Shut up, Beetle!’ Stalky pronounced. ‘There’s more than draws in this. You’ve cribbed your maths off me ever since you came to Coll. You don’t know what a cosine is, even now. Turkey does all your Latin.’
‘I like that! Who does both your Picciolas?’*
‘French don’t count. It’s time you began to work for your giddy livin’ an’ help us. You aren’t goin’ up for anythin’ that matters. Play for your side, as Heffles says, or die the death! You don’t want to die the death, again, do you? Now, let’s hear about that stinkard Johnson swottin’ Dutch. You’re sure it was Sammivel, not Binjimin?* You are so dam’ inaccurate!’
Beetle conducted an attentive class on the curiosities of literature for nearly a quarter of an hour. As Stalky pointed out, he promised to be useful.
The Horace Ode next morning ran well; and King was content. Then, in full feather, he sailed round the firmament at large, and, somehow, apropos to something or other, used the word ‘della Cruscan’*—‘if any of you have the faintest idea of its origin.’ Some one hadn’t caught it correctly which gave Beetle just time to whisper ‘Bran—an’ mills’ to Howell, who said, promptly: ‘Hasn’t it somethin’ to do with mills—an’ bran, sir?’ King cast himself into poses of stricken wonder. ‘Oddly enough,’ said he, ‘it has.’
They were then told a great deal about some silly Italian Academy of Letters which borrowed its office furniture from the equipment of mediæval flour-mills. And: ‘How has our Ap-Howell* come by his knowledge?’ Howell, being, indeed, Welsh, thought that it might have been something he had read in the holidays. King openly purred over him.
‘If that had been me,’ Beetle observed while they were toying with sardines between lessons, ‘he’d ha’ dropped on me for showin’-off.’
‘See what we’re savin’ you from,’ Stalky answered. ‘I’m playin’ Johnson, ’member, this afternoon.’
That, too, came cleanly off the bat; and King was gratified by this interest in the Doctor’s studies. But Stalky hadn’t a ghost of a notion how he had come by the fact.
‘Why didn’t you say your father told you?’ Beetle asked at tea.
‘My-y Lord! Have you ever seen the guv’nor?’ Stalky collapsed shrieking among the piles of bread and butter. ‘Well, look here.
Taffy goes in to-morrow about those drinkin’ horns an’ Tom-a-Bedlams. You cut up to the library after tea, Beetle. You know what King’s English papers are like. Look out useful stuff for answers an’ we’ll divvy* at prep.’
At prep., then, Beetle, loaded with assorted curiosities, made his forecast. He argued that there were bound to be a good many ‘what-do-you-know-abouts’ those infernal Augustans. Pope was generally a separate item; but the odds were that Swift, Addison, Steele, Johnson, and Goldsmith would be lumped under one head. Dryden was possible, too, though rather outside the Epoch.
‘Dryden. Oh! “Glorious John!” ’Know that much, anyhow,’ Stalky vaunted.
‘Then lug in Claude Halcro in the Pirate,’* Beetle advised. ‘He’s always sayin’ “Glorious John.” King’s a hog on Scott, too.’
‘No-o. I don’t read Scott. You take this Hell Crow* chap, Taffy.’
‘Right. What about Addison, Beetle?’ Howell asked.
‘’Drank like a giddy fish.’
‘We all know that,’ chorused the gentle children.
‘He said, “See how a Christian can die”; an’ he hadn’t any conversation, ’cause some one or other——’
‘Guessin’ again, as usual,’ M‘Turk sneered. ‘Who?’
‘’Cynical man called Mandeville*—said he was a silent parson in a tie-wig.’
‘Right-ho! I’ll take the silent parson with wig and ’purtenances. Taffy can have the dyin’ Christian,’ Stalky decided.
Howell nodded, and resumed: ‘What about Swift, Beetle?’
‘’Died mad. Two girls.* ’Saw a tree, an’ said: “I shall die at the top.”* Oh yes, an’ his private amusements were “ridiculous an’ trivial.”*’
Howell shook a wary head. ‘Dunno what that might let me in for with King. You can have it, Stalky.’
‘I’ll take that,’ M‘Turk yawned. ‘King doesn’t matter a curse to me, an’ he knows it. “Private amusements contemptible.” ’ He breathed all Ireland into the last perverted word.
‘Right,’ Howell assented. ‘Bags I* the dyin’ tree, then.’
‘’Cheery lot, these Augustans,’ Stalky sighed. ‘’Any more of ’em been croakin’ lately, Beetle?’
‘My Hat!’ the far-seeing Howell struck in. ‘King always gives us a stinker half-way down. What about Richardson—that “Clarissa” chap, y’know?’
‘I’ve found out lots about him,’ said Beetle, promptly. ‘He was the “Shakespeare of novelists.” ’
‘King won’t stand that. He says there’s only one Shakespeare. ’Mustn’t rot about Shakespeare to King,’ Howell objected.
‘An’ he was “always delighted with his own works,” ’ Beetle continued.
‘Like you,’ Stalky pointed out.
‘Shut up. Oh yes, an’——’ he consulted some hieroglyphics on a scrap of paper—‘the—the impassioned Diderot* (dunno who he was) broke forth: “O Richardson, thou singular genius!” ’
Howell and Stalky rose together, each clamouring that he had bagged that first.
‘I must have it!’ Howell shouted. ‘King’s never seen me breakin’ forth with the impassioned Diderot. He’s got to! Give me Diderot, you impassioned hound!’
‘Don’t upset the table. There’s tons more. An’ his genius was “fertile and prodigal.” ’
‘All right! I don’t mind bein’ “fertile and prodigal” for a change,’ Stalky volunteered. ‘King’s going to enjoy this exam. If he was the Army Prelim, chap we’d score.’
‘The Prelim, questions will be pretty much like King’s stuff,’ Beetle assured them.
‘But it’s always a score to know what your examiner’s keen on,’ Howell said, and illustrated it with an anecdote. ‘’Uncle of mine stayin’ with my people last holidays——’
‘Your Uncle Diderot?’ Stalky asked.
‘No, you ass! Captain of Engineers. He told me he was up for a Staff exam, to an old Colonel—bird who believed that the English were the Lost Tribes of Israel, or something like that. He’d written tons o’ books about it.’
‘All Sappers* are mad,’ said Stalky. ‘That’s one of the things the guv’nor did tell me.’
‘Well, ne’er mind. My uncle played up, o’ course. ’Said he’d always believed it, too. And so he got nearly top—marks for field—fortification. ’Didn’t know a thing about it, either, he said.’
‘Good biznai!’ said Stalky. ‘Well, go on, Beetle. What about Steele?’
‘Can’t I keep anything for myself?’
‘Not much!* King’ll ask you where you got it from, and you’d show off, an’ he’d find out. This ain’t your silly English Literature, you ass. It’s our marks. Can’t you see that?’
Beetle very soon saw it was exactly as Stalky had said.
Some days later a happy, and therefore not too likeable, King was explaining to the Reverend John in his own study how effort, zeal, scholarship, the Humanities, and perhaps a little natural genius for teaching, could inspire even the mark-hunting minds of the young. His text was the result of his General Knowledge paper on the Augustans and King Lear.
‘Howell,’ he said, ‘I was not surprised at. He has intelligence. But, frankly, I did not expect young Corkran to burgeon. Almost one might believe he occasionally read a book.’
‘And M‘Turk too?’
‘Yes. He had somehow arrived at a rather just estimate of Swift’s lighter literary diversions. They are contemptible. And in the “Lear” questions—they were all attracted by Edgar’s character—Stalky had dug up something about Aubrey on Tom-a-Bedlams from some unknown source. Aubrey, of all people! I’m sure I only alluded to him once or twice.’
‘Stalky among the prophets of “English”! And he didn’t remember where he’d got it either?’
‘No. Boys are amazingly purblind and limited. But if they keep this up at the Army Prelim., it is conceivable the Class may not do itself discredit. I told them so.’
‘I congratulate you. Ours is the hardest calling in the world, with the least reward. By the way, who are they likely to send down to examine us?’
‘I rests between two, I fancy. Martlett—with me at Balliol—and Hume. They wisely chose the Civil Service. Martlett has published a brochure on Minor Elizabethan Verse—journeyman work, of course—enthusiasms, but no grounding. Hume I heard of lately as having infected himself in Germany with some Transatlantic abomination about Shakespeare and Bacon.* He was Sutton.’* (The Head, by the way, was a Sutton man.)
King returned to his examination—papers and read extracts from them, as mothers repeat the clever sayings of their babes.
‘Here’s old Taffy Howell, for instance—apropos to Diderot’s eulogy of Richardson. “The impassioned Diderot broke forth: ‘Richardson, thou singular genius!’ ” ’
It was the Reverend John who stopped himself, just in time, from breaking forth. He recalled that, some days ago, he had heard Stalky on the stairs of Number Five, hurling the boots of many fags at Howell’s door and bidding the ‘impassioned Diderot’ within ‘break forth’ at his peril.
‘Odd,’ said he, gravely, when his pipe drew again. ‘Where did Diderot say that?’
‘I’ve forgotten for the moment. Taffy told me he’d picked it up in the course of holiday reading.’
‘Possibly. One never knows what heifers the young are ploughing with. Oh! How did Beetle do?’
‘The necessary dates and his handwriting defeated him, I’m glad to say. I cannot accuse myself of having missed any opportunity to castigate that boy’s inordinate and intolerable conceit. But I’m afraid it’s hopeless. I think I touched him somewhat, though, when I read Macaulay’s stock piece on Johnson. The others saw it at once.’
‘Yes, you told me about that at the time,’ said the Reverend John, hurriedly.
‘And our esteemed Head having taken him off maths for this précis-writing—whatever that means!—has turned him into a most objectionable free-lance. He was without any sense of reverence before, and promiscuous cheap ficti
on—which is all that his type of reading means—aggravates his worst points. When it came to a trial he was simply nowhere.’
‘Ah, well! Ours is a hard calling—specially if one’s sensitive. Luckily, I’m too fat.’ The Reverend John went out to bathe off the Pebble Ridge, girt with a fair linen towel whose red fringe signalled from half a mile away.
There lurked on summer afternoons, round the fives-court or the gym, certain watchful outcasts who had exhausted their weekly ration of three baths, and who were too well known to Cory the bathman to outface him by swearing that they hadn’t. These came in like sycophantic pups at walk, and when the Reverend John climbed the Pebble Ridge, more than a dozen of them were at his heels, with never a towel among them. One could only bathe off the Ridge with a House-master, but by custom, a dozen details above a certain age, no matter whence recruited, made a ‘House’ for bathing, if any kindly master chose so to regard them. Beetle led the low, growing reminder: ‘House! House, sir? We’ve got a House now, Padre.’
‘Let it be law as it is desired,’ boomed the Reverend John. On which word they broke forward, hirpling* over the unstable pebbles and stripping as they ran, till, when they touched the sands, they were as naked as God had made them, and as happy as He intended them to be.
It was half-flood—dead-smooth, except for the triple line of combers, a mile from wing to wing, that broke evenly with a sound of ripping canvas, while their sleek rear-guards formed up behind. One swam forth, trying to copy the roll, rise, and dig-out of the Reverend John’s side-stroke, and manoeuvred to meet them so that they should crash on one’s head, when for an instant one glanced down arched perspectives of beryl, before all broke in fizzy, electric diamonds, and the pulse of the main surge slung one towards the beach. From a good comber’s crest one was hove up almost to see Lundy* on the horizon. In its long cream-streaked trough, when the top had turned over and gone on, one might be alone in mid-Atlantic. Either way it was divine. Then one capered on the sands till one dried off; retrieved scattered flannels, gave thanks in chorus to the Reverend John, and lazily trailed up to five-o’clock call-over, taken on the lower cricket field.
The Complete Stalky & Co Page 28