‘Prefects’ meetin’!’ ‘Prefects’ meetin’!’ hissed the tables, and they imitated barbarically the actions and effects of the ground-ash.
‘How are we goin’ to jest with ’em?’ said Stalky, turning half-face to Beetle. ‘It’s your play this time!’
‘Look here,’ was the answer, ‘all I want you to do is not to laugh. I’m goin’ to take charge o’ young Tulke’s immorality—à la King, and it’s goin’ to be serious. If you can’t help laughin’ don’t look at me, or I’ll go pop.’
‘I see. All right,’ said Stalky.
M‘Turk’s lank frame stiffened in every muscle and his eyelids dropped half over his eyes. That last was a war-signal.
The eight or nine seniors, their faces very set and sober, were ranged in chairs round Carson’s severely Philistine study. Tulke was not popular among them, and a few who had had experience of Stalky and Company doubted that he might, perhaps, have made an ass of himself. But the dignity of the Sixth was to be upheld. So Carson began hurriedly:
‘Look here, you chaps, I’ve—we’ve sent for you to tell you you’re a good deal too cheeky to the Sixth—have been for some time—and—and we’ve stood about as much as we’re goin’ to, and it seems you’ve been cursin’ and swearin’ at Tulke on the Bideford road this afternoon, and we’re goin’ to show you you can’t do it. That’s all.’
‘Well, that’s awfully good of you,’ said Stalky, ‘but we happen to have a few rights of our own, too. You can’t, just because you happen to be made prefects, haul up seniors and jaw ’em on spec, like a House-master. We aren’t fags, Carson. This kind of thing may do for Davies tertius, but it won’t do for us.’
‘It’s only old Prout’s lunacy that we weren’t prefects long ago. You know that,’ said M‘Turk. ‘You haven’t any tact.’
‘Hold on,’ said Beetle. ‘A prefects’ meetin’ has to be reported to the Head. I want to know if the Head backs Tulke in this business?’
‘Well—well, it isn’t exactly a prefects’ meeting,’ said Carson. ‘We only called you in to warn you.’
‘But all the prefects are here,’ Beetle insisted. ‘Where’s the difference?’
‘My Gum!’ said Stalky. ‘Do you mean to say you’ve just called us in for a jaw—after cornin’ to us before the whole school at tea an’ givin’ ’em the impression it was a prefects’ meeting? ’Pon my Sam, Carson, you’ll get into trouble, you will.’
‘Hole-an’-corner business—hole-an’-corner business,’ said M‘Turk, wagging his head. ‘Beastly suspicious.’
The Sixth looked at each other uneasily. Tulke had called three prefects’ meetings in two terms, till the Head had informed the Sixth that they were expected to maintain discipline without the recurrent menace of his authority. Now, it seemed that they had made a blunder at the outset, but any right-minded boy would have sunk the legality and been properly impressed by the Court. Beetle’s protest was distinct ‘cheek.’
‘Well, you chaps deserve a lickin’,’ cried one Naughten incautiously. Then was Beetle filled with a noble inspiration.
‘For interferin’ with Tulke’s amours, eh?’ Tulke turned a rich sloe colour. ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ Beetle went on. ‘You’ve had your innings. We’ve been sent up for cursing and swearing at you, and we’re goin’ to be let off with a warning! Are we? Now then, you’re going to catch it.’
‘I—I—I—— ’ Tulke began. ‘Don’t let that young devil start jawing.’
‘If you’ve anything to say, you must say it decently,’ said Carson.
‘Decently? I will. Now look here. When we went into Bideford we met this ornament of the Sixth—is that decent enough?—hanging about on the road with a nasty look in his eye. We didn’t know then why he was so anxious to stop us, but at five minutes to four, when we were in Yeo’s shop, we saw Tulke in broad daylight, with his House-cap on, kissin’ an’ huggin’ a woman on the pavement. Is that decent enough for you?’
‘I didn’t—I wasn’t.’
‘We saw you?’ said Beetle. ‘And now—I’ll be decent, Carson—you sneak back with her kisses’ (not for nothing had Beetle perused the later poets) ‘hot on your lips and call prefects’ meetings, which aren’t prefects’ meetings, to uphold the honour of the Sixth.’ A new and heaven-cleft path opened before him that instant. ‘And how do we know,’ he shouted— ‘how do we know how many of the Sixth are mixed up in this abominable affair?’
‘Yes, that’s what we want to know,’ said M‘Turk, with simple dignity.
‘We meant to come to you about it quietly, Carson, but you would have the meeting,’ said Stalky sympathetically.
The Sixth were too taken aback to reply. So, carefully modelling his rhetoric on King, Beetle followed up the attack surpassing and surprising himself.
‘It—it isn’t so much the cynical immorality of the biznai, as the blatant indecency of it, that’s so awful. As far as we can see, it’s impossible for us to go into Bideford without runnin’ up against some prefect’s unwholesome amours. There’s nothing to snigger over, Naughten. I don’t pretend to know much about these things—but it seems to me a chap must be pretty far dead in sin’ (that was a quotation from the school chaplain) ‘when he takes to embracing his paramours’ (that was Hakluyt*) ‘before all the city’ (a reminiscence of Milton). ‘He might at least have the decency—you’re authorities on decency, I believe—to wait till dark. But he didn’t. You didn’t! Oh, Tulke. You—you incontinent little animal!’
‘Here, shut up a minute. What’s all this about, Tulke?’ said Carson.
‘I—look here. I’m awfully sorry. I never thought Beetle would take this line.’
‘Because—you’ve—no decency—you—thought—I hadn’t,’ cried Beetle all in one breath.
‘Tried to cover it all up with a conspiracy, did you?’ said Stalky.
‘Direct insult to all three of us,’ said M‘Turk. ‘A most filthy mind you have, Tulke.’
‘I’ll shove you fellows outside the door if you go on like this,’ said Carson angrily.
‘That proves it’s a conspiracy,’ said Stalky, with the air of a virgin martyr.
‘I—I was goin’ along the street—I swear I was,’ cried Tulke, ‘and—and I’m awfully sorry about it—a woman came up and kissed me. I swear I didn’t kiss her.’
There was a pause, filled by Stalky’s long, liquid whistle of contempt, amazement, and derision.
‘On my honour,’ gulped the persecuted one. ‘Oh, do stop him jawing.’
‘Very good,’ M‘Turk interjected. ‘We are compelled, of course, to accept your statement.’
‘Confound it!’ roared Naughten. ‘You aren’t head-prefect here, M‘Turk.’
‘Oh, well,’ returned the Irishman, ‘you know Tulke better than we do. I am only speaking for ourselves. We accept Tulke’s word. But all I can say is that if I’d been collared in a similarly disgustin’ situation, and had offered the same explanation Tulke has, I—I wonder what you’d have said. However, it seems on Tulke’s word of honour——’
‘And Tulkus—beg pardon—kiss, of course—Tulkiss is an honourable man,’* put in Stalky.
‘——that the Sixth can’t protect ’emselves from bein’ kissed when they go for a walk!’ cried Beetle, taking up the running with a rush. ‘Sweet business, isn’t it? Cheerful thing to tell the fags, ain’t it? We aren’t prefects, of course, but we aren’t kissed very much. ’Don’t think that sort of thing ever enters our heads; does it, Stalky?’
‘Oh no!’ said Stalky, turning aside to hide his emotions. M‘Turk’s face merely expressed lofty contempt and a little weariness.
‘Well, you seem to know a lot about it,’ interposed a prefect.
‘’Can’t help it—when you chaps shove it under our noses.’ Beetle dropped into a drawling parody of King’s most biting colloquial style—the gentle rain after the thunderstorm. ‘Well, it’s all very sufficiently vile and disgraceful, isn’t it? I don’t know who comes out of it worst: Tulke, w
ho happens to have been caught; or the other fellows who haven’t. And we’—here he wheeled fiercely on the other two—‘we’ve got to stand up and be jawed by them because we’ve disturbed their intrigues.’
‘Hang it! I only wanted to give you a word of warning,’ said Carson, thereby handing himself bound to the enemy.
‘Warn? You?’ This with the air of one who finds loathsome gifts in his locker. ‘Carson, would you be good enough to tell us what conceivable thing there is that you are entitled to warn us about after this exposure? Warn? Oh, it’s a little too much! Let’s go somewhere where it’s clean.’
The door banged behind their outraged innocence.
‘Oh, Beetle! Beetle! Beetle! Golden Beetle!’ sobbed Stalky, hurling himself on Beetle’s panting bosom as soon as they reached the study. ‘However did you do it?’
‘Dear-r man!’ said M‘Turk, embracing Beetle’s head with both arms, while he swayed it to and fro on the neck, in time to this ancient burden—
‘Pretty lips—sweeter than—cherry or plum,
Always look—jolly and—never look glum;
Seem to say—Come away. Kissy!—come, come!
Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum-yum!’*
‘Look out. You’ll smash my gig-lamps,’* puffed Beetle, emerging. ‘Wasn’t it glorious? Didn’t I “Eric” ’em splendidly?* Did you spot my cribs from King? Oh, blow!’ His countenance clouded. ‘There’s one adjective I didn’t use—obscene. ’Don’t know how I forgot that. It’s one of King’s pet ones, too.’
‘Never mind. They’ll be sendin’ ambassadors round in half a shake to beg us not to tell the school. It’s a deuced serious business for them,’ said M‘Turk. ‘Poor Sixth—poor old Sixth!’
‘Immoral young rips,’ Stalky snorted. ‘What an example to pure-souled boys like you and me!’
And the Sixth in Carson’s study stood aghast, glowering at Tulke, who was on the edge of tears.
‘Well,’ said the head-prefect acidly. ‘You’ve made a pretty average ghastly mess of it, Tulke.’
‘Why—why didn’t you lick that young devil Beetle before he began jawing?’ Tulke wailed.
‘I knew there’d be a row,’ said a prefect of Prout’s House. ‘But you would insist on the meeting, Tulke.’
‘Yes, and a fat lot of good it’s done us,’ said Naughten. ‘They come in here and jaw our heads off when we ought to be jawin’ them. Beetle talks to us as if we were a lot of blackguards and—and all that. And when they’ve hung us up to dry, they go out and slam the door like a House-master. All your fault, Tulke.’
‘But I didn’t kiss her.’
‘You ass! If you’d said you had and stuck to it, it would have been ten times better than what you did,’ Naughten retorted. ‘Now they’ll tell the whole school—and Beetle ’ll make up a lot of beastly rhymes and nick-names.’
‘But, hang it, she kissed me!’ Outside his work, Tulke’s mind moved slowly.
‘I’m not thinking of you. I’m thinking of us. I’ll go up to their study and see if I can make ’em keep quiet!’
‘Tulke’s awf’ly cut up about this business,’ Naughten began, ingratiatingly, when he found Beetle.
‘Who’s kissed him this time?’
‘——and I’ve come to ask you chaps, and especially you, Beetle, not to let the thing be known all over the school. Of course, fellows as senior as you are can easily see why.’
‘Urn!’ said Beetle, with the cold reluctance of one who faces an unpleasant public duty. ‘I suppose I must go and talk to the Sixth again.’
‘Not the least need, my dear chap, I assure you,’ said Naughten hastily. ‘I’ll take any message you care to send.’
But the chance of supplying the missing adjective was too tempting. So Naughten returned to that still undissolved meeting, Beetle, white, icy, and aloof, at his heels.
‘There seems,’ he began, with laboriously crisp articulation, ‘there seems to be a certain amount of uneasiness among you as to the steps we may think fit to take in regard to this last revelation of the—ah—obscene. If it is any consolation to you to know that we have decided—for the honour of the school, you understand—to keep our mouths shut as to these—ah—obscenities, you—ah—have it.’
He wheeled, his head among the stars, and strode statelily back to his study, where Stalky and M‘Turk lay side by side upon the table wiping their tearful eyes—too weak to move.
* * * * *
The Latin prose paper was a success beyond their wildest dreams. Stalky and M‘Turk were, of course, out of all examinations (they did extra-tuition with the Head), but Beetle attended with zeal.
‘This, I presume, is a par-ergon* on your part,’ said King, as he dealt out the papers. ‘One final exhibition ere you are translated to loftier spheres? A last attack on the classics? It seems to confound you already.’
Beetle studied the print with knit brows. ‘I can’t make head or tail of it,’ he murmured. ‘What does it mean?’
‘No, no!’ said King, with scholastic coquetry. ‘We depend upon you to give us the meaning. This is an examination, Beetle mine, not a guessing-competition. You will find your associates have no difficulty in——’
Tulke left his place and laid the paper on the desk. King looked, read, and turned a ghastly green.
‘Stalky’s missing a heap,’ thought Beetle. ‘’Wonder how King’ll get out of it?’
‘There seems,’ King began with a gulp, ‘a certain modicum of truth in our Beetle’s remark. I am—er—inclined to believe that the worthy Randall must have dropped this in forme—if you know what that means. Beetle, you purport to be an editor. Perhaps you can enlighten the Form as to formes.’
‘What, sir? Whose form? I don’t see that there’s any verb in this sentence at all, an’—an’—the Ode is all different, somehow.’
‘I was about to say, before you volunteered your criticism, that an accident must have befallen the paper in type, and that the printer reset it by the light of nature. No—’ he held the thing at arm’s length—‘our Randall is not an authority on Cicero or Horace.’
‘Rather mean to shove it off on Randall,’ whispered Beetle to his neighbour. ‘King must ha’ been as screwed as an owl when he wrote it out.’
‘But we can amend the error by dictating it.’
‘No, sir.’ The answer came pat from a dozen throats at once. ‘That cuts the time for the exam. Only two hours allowed, sir. ’Tisn’t fair. It’s a printed-paper exam. How’re we goin’ to be marked for it? It’s all Randall’s fault. It isn’t our fault, anyhow. An exam.’s an exam.,’ etc., etc.
Naturally Mr. King considered this was an attempt to undermine his authority, and, instead of beginning dictation at once, delivered a lecture on the spirit in which examinations should be approached. As the storm subsided, Beetle fanned it afresh.
‘Eh? What? What was that you were saying to MacLagan?’
‘I only said I thought the papers ought to have been looked at before they were given out, sir.’
‘Hear, hear!’ from a back bench.
Mr. King wished to know whether Beetle took it upon himself personally to conduct the traditions of the school. His zeal for knowledge ate up another fifteen minutes, during which the prefects showed unmistakable signs of boredom.
‘Oh, it was a giddy time,’ said Beetle, afterwards, in dismantled Number Five. ‘He gibbered a bit, and I kept him on the gibber, and then he dictated about a half of Dolabella & Co.’*
‘Good old Dolabella! Friend of mine. Yes?’ said Stalky tenderly.
‘Then we had to ask him how every other word was spelt, of course, and he gibbered a lot more. He cursed me and MacLagan (Mac played up like a trump) and Randall, and the “materialised ignorance of the unscholarly middle classes,” “lust for mere marks,” and all the rest. It was what you might call a final exhibition—a last attack—a giddy par-ergon.’
‘But of course he was blind squiffy when he wrote the paper. I hope you explained that? s
aid Stalky.
‘Oh yes. I told Tulke so. I said an immoral prefect an’ a drunken House-master were legitimate inferences. Tulke nearly blubbed. He’s awfully shy of us since Mary’s time.’
Tulke preserved that modesty till the last moment—till the journey-money had been paid, and the boys were filling the brakes that took them to the station. Then the three happily constrained him to wait awhile.
‘You see, Tulke, you may be a prefect,’ said Stalky, ‘but I’ve left the Coll. Do you see, Tulke, dear?’
‘Yes, I see. Don’t bear malice, Stalky.’
‘Stalky? Curse your impudence, you young cub,’ shouted Stalky, magnificent in top-hat, stiff collar, spats, and high-waisted, snuff-coloured ulster. ‘I want you to understand that I’m Mister Corkran, an’ you’re a dirty little schoolboy.’
‘Besides bein’ frabjously* immoral,’ said M‘Turk. ‘’Wonder you aren’t ashamed to foist your company on pure-minded boys like us!’
‘Come on, Tulke,’ cried Naughten, from the prefects’ brake.
‘Yes, we’re comin’. Shove up and make room, you Collegers. You’ve all got to be back next term, with your “Yes, sir,” and “Oh, sir,” an’ “No, sir,” an’ “Please, sir”; but before we say good-bye we’re going to tell you a little story. Go on, Dickie’ (this to the driver); ‘we’re quite ready. Kick that hat-box under the seat, an’ don’t crowd your Uncle Stalky.’
‘As nice a lot of high-minded youngsters as you’d wish to see,’ said M‘Turk, gazing round with bland patronage. ‘A trifle immoral, but then—boys will be boys. It’s no good tryin’ to look stuffy, Carson. Mister Corkran will now oblige with the story of Tulke an’ Mary Yeo!’
Slaves of the Lamp Part II
Rudyard Kipling
That very Infant who told the story of the capture of Boh* Naghee1 to Eustace Cleever, novelist, inherited an estateful baronetcy, with vast revenues, resigned the service, and became a landholder, while his mother stood guard over him to see that he married the right girl. But, new to his position, he presented the local volunteers with a full-sized magazine-rifle range, two miles long, across the heart of his estate, and the surrounding families, who lived in savage seclusion among woods full of pheasants, regarded him as an erring maniac. The noise of the firing disturbed their poultry, and Infant was cast out from the society of J.P.’s and decent men till such time as a daughter of the county might lure him back to right thinking. He took his revenge by filling the house with choice selections of old schoolmates home on leave—affable detrimentals,* at whom the bicycle-riding maidens of the surrounding families were allowed to look from afar. I knew when a troopship was in port by the Infant’s invitations. Sometimes he would produce old friends of equal seniority; at others, young and blushing giants whom I had left small fags far down in the Lower Second; and to these Infant and the elders expounded the whole duty of Man in the Army.
The Complete Stalky & Co Page 33