by E. F. Benson
Then at the same moment almost, while he was hot with indignation at being justly accused, he had seen the matron at the far end of the dormitory, and could not resist the temptation to get David into further trouble. This, too, had been successfully accomplished, and David would certainly be caned after morning school. And then Bags began to regret his success: his affection for David, whom no one could help liking even when he was being beastly, and his sense of his own meanness pointed the finger of scorn at him, and, having ensured David a caning, he wished he had not, at any rate, taken his beloved stag-beetles as well. So, lingering behind till the rest of the dormitory had gone to the bath-room, he induced the Monarch and his wife, who were scratching about in his soap-tin, to crawl on to his sponge, and, as he passed David’s cubicle, he had shaken them off on to his bed.
Then had come the bath-room complication. He had been forced eventually by Ferrers’s resistless legal acumen to accept the challenge, and he would have to whack David, for any one might search his cubicle till Doomsday and never find a stag-beetle there. And each one of those cuts would be unjust: he had taken the stag-beetles, and David was perfectly right. The fact of having put them back did not ease a troubled conscience.
David rushed upstairs again to his dormitory, and with clatter and publicity went straight to Bags’s cubicle, and began a violent and intimate search. He searched in his pockets, he examined the lower tray of his soap-dish, he peered behind pictures, and ransacked the receptacle, usually called the synagogue-box, where Bags kept family-letters and such-like, but nowhere was there the faintest trace of the Monarch to be seen. These operations Glanders observed — and David observed that she was observing them — with her bleak and stony eyes, and just as he was very busy she approached.
“Do you want to be reported twice, Master Blaize?” she asked.
“Oh, certainly, if you like,” said David. “But Crabtree asked me to get his liniment.”
“And why can’t Master Crabtree get it himself, then?” asked Glanders. “And why does he want liniment?”
“Oh, don’t be tedious,” said David. “He can’t get it himself, because he hasn’t got any clothes on, and is afraid of shocking you, and he wants it because he has got a bruise, which you can see if you aren’t afraid of being shocked. Anything else I can tell you?”
Muffled laughter sounded from various directions as Glanders sniffed, which was her congenital way of acknowledging the legality of doubtful proceedings, and David finished his search, turning over the pillows of Bags’s bed without further hindrance. But there was no Monarch to be found, and he had to go back to the bath-room to report that he could find no liniment and had lost his challenge. This was depressing, because the beloved Monarch was still missing, also his wife, the hope of the race, and because the loss of the challenge meant three nasty cuts from Bags and his racquet-handle. And the Head was going to let fly at him first, and there was the missionary-map to be made, and the whole blackness of this dreadful Monday morning, dissipated for the moment by his certainty that he would find the Monarch, overcast the sky again.
On his way back he passed his cubicle, and, pausing to throw his sponge and towel down, his eye fell on his bed, and there on the blanket were two black blots of familiar shape.
David gave a great sigh.
“Oh Monarch and missus,” he said affectionately, “you little devils.”
The travelling-carriage of the royalties was to hand, and in a moment the black pair were safe again. How they had got on to his blanket he did not pause to think, and the three cuts due to him were “jolly cheap at the price.” He made but a couple of leaps down the stairs to the bath-room.
“I say, I’ve lost the challenge, Bags,” he said; “but I’ve found the Monarch. He was on my blankets, and so was she. And — I say, I’m sorry I suspected you. When’ll you take your cuts?”
Bags’s inconvenient conscience and affection gave him a nasty prod at this. If David had only not said he was sorry he suspected him, he would not have felt so “beastly.” On the other hand, it was dangerous to try to stifle his internal beastliness by magnanimity, since this might lead to fresh suspicions on David’s part. But magnanimity salted with sarcasm might serve his turn.
“Oh, I don’t want to whack you,” he said, “as you say you were sorry. As if I should have touched your filthy stags! Clip their wings, and take them to Marchester next half, and see if Hughes is proud of his pal who keeps vermin,”
David stared in blank surprise. To forgo the pleasure of chastisement was not in the spirit of Shylock.
“Oh, well, thanks awfully,” he said. “If you don’t want to take your cuts, I’m sure I don’t mind not getting them. But why don’t you?”
Bags was struggling into his shirt, and speech was for the moment extinguished.
“Simply because the challenge was too silly for words,” he said, as his head emerged.
The repetition of this silly reason did exactly that which Bags desired should not happen. Suspicion, vague and unformulated as yet, again sprang up in David’s mind. Such magnanimity was simply childish.
“I think I’ll take the cuts then, Crabtree,” he said, to mark the complete severance of friendly relations.
That roused Bags: the rejection of his spurious, but highly superior, motives quite stifled the prods of his inconvenient conscience.
“All right, then, you shall,” he said. “Gosh! I’ll let into you. I’ll put beef into them, Blaize. I’ve got a racquet-handle that’ll do nicely. I bet I break it. You’ll want some liniment afterwards.”
The ten-minutes bell sounded at this moment, and the boys ran upstairs again to finish dressing and say their prayers. For the last five minutes of these ten they were bound to be on their knees at their bedside, while Glanders patrolled the dormitory. But with care and discreet peeping through fingers it was possible to get through some neglected dressing during the devotional five minutes, and David, who was a good deal behindhand, buttoned his collar, put on his tie, and laced one boot without being detected.
Mr. Dutton was in an unusually docile mood during this hour from seven to eight, and it wanted little penetration on the part of his pupils, when they remembered the visit he had done the Head the honour to pay him last night, to guess the cause of that. David felt chagrin at the fact that he had been detained in the bath-room, and had not been able to take the dismembered yellowback from the grate, to find out what made the Head so waxy, but there was no doubt that it was the Head who had made Mr. Dutton so mild. Indeed, it had often been a debated question as to which was really the worst, a caning or a proper “jaw” from the Head, for the hardiest were reduced to unwilling tears by the Head’s tongue, when he really chose to apply it, so convincing and dismal a picture could he paint of a boy’s satanic iniquity, and the inevitable ruin that such courses fashioned for him in this world and the next. But it was a point of honour not to cry at any application of the cane after you were twelve; kids might cry, but not elderly persons. The cane might break your hands, and make you set your teeth, but it was not allowable to let it break your spirit. But a “jaw” broke your spirit into smithereens, and no doubt that disintegrating process had happened to old Dubs. Anything in the way of construing was sufficient this morning, and the grammatical questions were mere child’s-play.
It was already ten minutes to eight, and the school sergeant, a whiskered veteran, who visited the different class-rooms during early school, with orders from the Head, and summonses for boys who had been reported, had already passed the museum door without coming in, and David’s heart rose. If Glanders had reported him, it was quite certain that the sergeant would have conveyed the summons that he was to go to the Head after chapel, to his class-room, and yet he had passed without delivering it. From time to time these remissions happened. Glanders occasionally forgot to report, even when she had promised it; sometimes even in the act of complaining, the stoniness of her bosom relented. Then, with a sinking of the heart, proportion
ally greater owing to its premature uplifting, there was a tap on the door, and the sergeant entered, saluting.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” he said to Mr. Dutton, handing him a small slip of blue paper; “but I forgot this as I went by.”
Mr. Dutton glanced at it.
“Blaize to go to the Head after chapel,” he announced, and David thought he detected a faint smile showing the malicious glee of a fellow-sufferer.
Chapel, usually tedious, was not long enough that morning, and the psalms, the lesson, the hymns, and the prayers passed in a flash. Ferrers, as they went out, administered spurious consolation.
“If you stick your hands in cold water,” he said, “it’ll numb them a bit. I remember, last winter, I held mine in the snow for five minutes, and it didn’t sting nearly so much.”
“And there’s such a sight of snow about in July, isn’t there?” said David bitterly.
Ferrers shrugged his shoulders.
“All right, then,” he said, feeling slightly hurt. “And you’ve got your three cuts from Bags, too, haven’t you? I bet Bags lays on.”
A minute afterwards he was in the awful presence. Even as he entered he heard the jingle of keys, and when he advanced to the table, where its occupant was looking vexed, he saw that the fatal middle drawer was already open. That it could have been opened for any other reason did not strike him; he supposed that his case was already judged.
For the moment the Head seemed unaware of his presence, and continued to read the letter that apparently annoyed him.
“Pish!” he said at length, in a dreadful voice, and, looking up, as he tore it in fragments, saw David.
“Ah, Blaize,” he said, “I sent for you — yes, I want you to answer me a question or two.”
This looked as unpromising as possible. The drawer was already open, but it seemed that a “jaw” was coming first. Why couldn’t he cane him and have done with it, thought the dejected David.
The Head rapped the table sharply.
“Question one,” he said. “Is it the case that my daughters have incurred the wrath of the first form?”
David’s head reeled at the thickness of the troubles.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good. Question two, which you need not answer if any sense of honour forbid you. Why have they deserved this — er disgrace? And why do you join in inflicting it?”
David drew a long breath; there was no sense of honour that would be violated in telling the Head, but to do so was like taking a high header into unknown waters, when it required all the courage you were possessed of to go off a low board into four feet of familiar swimming-bath.
“Please, sir, it’s quite obvious that Car—”
He had begun with a rush, and the rush had carried him too far.
“Carrots,” said the Head suggestively.
(Lord! how did he know? thought David.) “Please, sir, we felt sure that Miss Edith had got Ferrers into a row, because she saw him in Richmond week before last,” said David.
“And — and sneaked to me?” suggested the Head.
“Yes, sir, told you.”
“I dare say Miss Edith saw him,” said the Head, “but I haven’t the slightest idea whether she actually did or not. I saw him myself. Miss Edith had nothing to do with it. Kindly tell your friends so.”
“I’ll tell them,” said David. “They’ll be awfully glad, sir.”
“Why?” asked the Head.
Again David dived off the high header-board into dark waters.
“Because nobody wanted to think she was a sneak, sir,” he said. “We always thought she was a good chap — young lady, I mean, sir.”
The Head nodded, and for the next half-minute busied himself with the reports that had come in this morning.
“I think there was something else I wanted to see you about,” he said. “Yes: here it is. You are reported for being in Crabtree’s cubicle before dressing-bell this morning. Any explanation?”
“No, sir,” said David.
“You knew it was against the rules?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Head drew a large and dreaded book towards him, which contained a list of all the boys’ names, and against each the number of times they had been reported for any misconduct during the current term. Next the name of Blaize was that of Bellingham, and, glancing at it hastily, he credited David with Bellingham’s stainless record.
“I see you have not been reported before this term,” he said.
The moment he had spoken he saw his mistake; on the line below was David’s record, showing that he had been reported twice. But he waited for David’s answer. He had not considered what he should do if David accepted the statement, but he believed, and wanted to prove to himself, that David would not.
A joyful possibility whirled through David’s mind; it was conceivable that previous reports against him had not been entered. And then, not really knowing why, he spoke.
“No, sir, I have been reported before,” he said.
“For the same offence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Once before?” asked the Head, feeling that his test stood firm.
“No, sir, twice,” said David, squeezing his hands together.
The Head closed the book. He put it in the middle drawer and closed that also.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” he said. “And now I want you, as a personal favour, to make an effort to keep school-rules. They are made for that purpose. Good-bye, my boy. Ah, you are late for breakfast, so come and have breakfast with me. If you are late for school afterwards, explain to Mr. Dutton.”
David was joyfully late for school, and not only explained briefly then, but categorically afterwards to his form in the interval at half-past ten.
“Sausages,” he said, “and poached eggs and bacon, and sloshy buttered toast and strawberries. Gosh, the Head does himself well. He has breakfast like that every day, I expect. Didn’t I tuck in? Oh, and another thing: Carrots didn’t sneak at all, it was the Head himself who saw Ferrers in Richmond. He told me so.”
“Don’t believe it,” said Ferrers, who had misogynistic tendencies.
“Well then, you’ve got to. The Head never lies, and so Carrots is all right. And the Head’s my pal.”
“Can’t think why he didn’t whack you, though, “ said Ferrers. “Perhaps he knew you were going to catch it from Bags. He’s been binding his racquet-handle, too, to get a firm grip.”
This was slightly malicious on Ferrers’s part, but what with special tea last night, and special breakfast this morning, and the recovery of the Monarch, and the remission of a caning, he thought David a little above himself. But even this information about Bags did not appear to depress him, and he cocked his yellow head on one side, like a meditative canary, and half-shut his eyes, as if focussing something.
“Blow it, if I hadn’t forgotten all about Bags,” he said. “Ferrers, there’s something rummy about Bags’s show. Why did Bags not want to take up my challenge, if he knew the Monarch wasn’t in his cubicle? And why didn’t he take a dozen cuts at me? It’s all rot of him to say that he didn’t care about whacking me. Any decent chap’s mouth would water to lick a fellow who had accused him of stealing.”
The two boys had wandered away in this half-hour’s interval between schools to a distant corner of the field below the chestnut-tree. There David lay down flat, and Ferrers flicked the fallen flowers at his face. But he stopped at this.
“You see, I caught him a juicy hack, too, last night, “ continued David. “And he’s a revengeful beast in a general way.”
“Perhaps it’s the Day of Atonement or something,” suggested Ferrers.
David sat up.
“No, that can’t be it,” he said. “Else he’d want to make me atone. Hallo, here he comes across the field, racquet-handle and all.”
He suddenly gave a shrill whistle through his broken front tooth.
“I say, will you back me up whatever I say?”
he asked. “I’ve thought of something ripping.” Ferrers peered short-sightedly across the field. He did not often wear his spectacles, since they were supposed to give him a resemblance to Goggles, which was the rise of intolerable comment. So they seldom graced his freckled nose.
“Yes, here he comes,” he said. “I’ll back you up. But, what is it?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” said David.
Bags made a truculent approach, swinging his racquet-handle. He had done all that could humanly be done in the easing of his conscience, and since he had been literally unable to get out of the rôle of executioner with honour, he had wisely determined to dwell on the bright side of it, and hit as hard as he could in the same place.
“I’ll lick you now if you like,” he said brightly.
David turned a cold face on him.
“Thanks, awfully,” he said, “but we settled it for twelve. You see, a good deal may happen before twelve. Ferrers and I were just talking it over. Wasn’t it a pity that Ferrers Minor slept so badly last night?”
This remark seemed slightly to disconcert Bags, but he carried it off with fair success.
“The point?” asked Bags politely, slapping his leg gently with the racquet-handle.
“Oh, thought you might see it,” said David. “The point is that he didn’t go to sleep before — when was it, Ferrers?”
“He heard the clock strike one,” said Ferrers, at a venture.
A shade of relief crossed Bags’s face, which the Machiavellian David noticed.
“I still don’t see the point,” said Bags.