Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Hughes gave him another critical glance, as solemn as a tailor’s when looking at the fit of a coat that he wants to be a credit to him.

  “Oh well, that buttonhole,” he said. “I think I — should take that out. Only tremendous swells wear them, and even then it’s rather ‘side.’”

  David instantly plucked out the offending vegetable. He probably would have tom out a handful of his hair, if crisp yellow locks showed “side.” Hughes nodded at him approvingly.

  “Now you’re first-rate,” he said. “Oh, just send your stick up with your luggage. Now come on. You look just as if you were at Marchester already. You see I got leave for you to come and brew — have tea, you know — in my study this afternoon, and it would have been beastly for both of us, if you weren’t up to Adams’s form, and it turned out that you smoked or kept white mice, or something hopeless.”

  The two handsome boys went on their way up to the Mecca of David’s aspirations, and he thought with the deepest relief of his decision not to bring the Monarch and his wife with him. It had been a wrench to part with them even for a few days, and an anxiety to leave them even in the care of the assiduous Bags, to whom he had given a paper of directions about diet and fresh air. But if it was hopeless to keep white mice, how much more dire would have been his position if he had been found possessed of stag-beetles, or if, as might easily have happened without this oblique warning, he had incidentally mentioned to some of Hughes’s friends that his tastes lay in those verminous directions! And Hughes proceeded, inspired by that authoritative conventionality which public schools so teach, that every well-bred junior boy of fifteen or sixteen in any house is in characteristics of behaviour exactly like every other. At one time buttonholes and smoking are de rigueur, at another they are quite impossible; at one time it is the fashion to be industrious, and every one works, at another to be as idle as is possible. Morals are subject to the same strict but changeable etiquette; for years perhaps the most admirable tone characterises a house, then another code obtains, and Satan himself might be staggered at the result.

  “Jove, it was a good thing I came to the station,” he said, “and I wanted to, too. Else you might have appeared with a stick and a buttonhole and a cigarette, and a slow-worm for all I knew. Do you remember we had a slow-worm, you and I, at Helmsworth? Of course some fellows go in for natural history, and Maddox, who’s the head of our house, collects butterflies. But then, he’s such a swell, he can do just what he likes. I’m his fag, you know, and he’s awfully jolly to me. Damned hot it is; let’s walk slower.”

  David was extremely quick at picking up an atmosphere and he made the perfectly correct conclusion that, though smoking was bad form, swearing was not. But the mention of Maddox roused the thrill and glamour of hero-worship — a hero-worship more complete and entire than is ever accorded by the world of grown-up men and women to their most august idols.

  “Oh go on, tell me about Maddox,” he said.

  “I dare say you’ll see him. Sure to, in fact. He’s not very tall, but he’s damned good-looking. He’s far the finest bat in the eleven, and the funny thing is he says cricket’s rather a waste of time, and hardly ever goes up to a net. He’s editor of the school-paper, and played racquets for us at Queen’s last year. But what he likes best of all is reading.”

  “That’s queer,” said David.

  “’Tis rather. He makes all our juniors work too, I can tell you. But he’ll help anybody, and he’ll always give you a construe of a bit you don’t understand, if you’ve looked out all the words first. And he’s only just seventeen, think of that, so that he’ll have two more years here. He never plays footer, though he can run like hell, and says Rugby is a barbarous sport; and in the winter, when he’s not playing racquets, he just reads and reads. His mother was French, too; rum thing that, and the point is that H. T. (that’s Hairy Toe, an awful ass) who teaches French, is English, and Maddox knows about twice as much as he. He makes awful howlers, Maddox says, and pronounces just as if he was a cad. But that’s all right, because he is.” David skipped with uncontrollable emotion.

  “Oh, I say, how ripping!” he said. “But I wish Maddox liked cricket and footer.”

  “Well, footer he detests; but he only means that thinking of nothing but cricket is a waste of time. By the way, you’re in luck: there’s a two-days’ match begins to-morrow against Barnard’s team. Friday’s a whole holiday; some frowsy saint. They say Jessop’s coming. Wouldn’t it be sport to see him hit a dozen sixes, and then be clean-bowled by Cruikshank?”

  “Oh, and who’s Cruikshank?” asked David. “Well, that’s damned funny not to have heard of Cruikshank. Fastest bowler we’ve ever had, and he’s in Adams’s too. He and Maddox don’t get on a bit, though of course they’re awfully polite to each other. Cruikshank’s awfully pi: fit to burst. Here we are.”

  Hughes again cast an anxious eye over David, for the moment was momentous, as the whole school would be about. But he really felt that David would do him credit. They paused a moment in the gateway.

  “If you like we’ll stroll round the court,” he said, “before we go down to house. There’s chapel, you see, and hall next beyond it; foul place, stinks of mutton. Then two more college boarding-houses — what?”

  “But which is Adams’s?” asked David.

  “Oh, that’s not here. These are all college houses, in-boarders, and rather scuggy compared to out-boarders. Then there’s fifth form classroom and sixth form class-room, and school library up on top. I dare say Maddox is there now. Big school behind, more class-rooms and then the fives-court. Like to walk through!”

  No devout Catholic ever went to Rome in more heart-felt pilgrimage than was this to David. It was the temple of his religion that he saw, the public school which was to be his home. His horizon and aspirations stretched no farther than this red-brick arena, for, to the eyes of the thirteen-year-old, those who have finished with their public school and have gone out from it to the middle-aged Universities, are already past their prime. They are old; they are done with, unless the fact that they play cricket for Oxford or Cambridge gives them a little longer lease of immortality. But to be a great man, a Maddox or a Cruikshank in this theatre of life which already his feet trod, was the utmost dream of David’s ambitions, and if at the hoary age of eighteen he could only have played a real part in the life of the scenes that were now unrolling to him he felt that an honoured grave would be the natural conclusion. Everything that might happen after public school was over seemed a posthumous sort of affair. You were old after that, and at this moment even the Head, for all his terror and glamour, appeared a tomb-like creature.

  Hughes exchanged “Hullo” with a friend or two, and said “Right: half-past four” to one of them, which made David long to know what heroic thing was to happen then, and took him past the east end of chapel without further comment. David, quickly and quite mistakenly, drew a conclusion based on his private school experience.

  “I suppose chapel’s pretty good rot,” he said.

  This was worse than buttonholes.

  “Chapel rot!” said Hughes. “Why, it’s perfectly ripping. Maddox’s uncle was the architect. It’s the finest school-chapel in England, bar Eton perhaps. You’ll see it to-night. You never saw anything so ripping.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said David, flushing; “but I didn’t know.”

  Hughes paused a moment and looked at him again.

  “I say, Blazes, it’s awful sport your coming down like this,” he said. “Do sweat your eyes out over this exam. It would be ripping if you got a scholarship. We ‘re all working like beans in the house: that’s Maddox’s doing. Work’s quite different, if you take an interest in it, you know. Yes, that path goes down to the bathing-place, and there are nightingales in the trees. Then hall: fuggy spot, we all have dinner there, both out-boarders and in-boarders. See that don there in cap and gown? He takes the fifth form. He’s frightfully polite, and is learning to ride a bicycle. Consequently you always touc
h your cap to him as he goes wobbling along, and he takes a hand off to return your chaste salute, and falls off. Good rag. There’s his class-room, with the library up above. We’ll just go down there, and I’ll answer to name-calling on my way.”

  They turned out of the big court into an asphalted square full of boys. A master was standing on a raised dais at one end, calling out names with extreme deliberation.

  “Oh, damn, he’s only just begun,” said Hughes, after listening a moment. “We won’t wait.”

  He touched another boy on the shoulder.

  “I say, answer for me, Plugs,” he said. “You owe me one.”

  “Right oh! What’s your voice now, Topknot? Treble or bass?”

  “‘Bout midway. Something with a crack in it. Thanks, awfully.”

  Plugs, whoever Plugs was, saw Hughes’s companion.

  “Who’s your friend?” he asked.

  “Scholarship-chap from my t ‘other school. Decent!”

  That was an aside, but clearly audible, and David swelled with pride, and tried to look abnormally decent....

  They made their way through the crowd that was collecting and dispersing as the roll-call proceeded, and went back down the long, empty passage past the steps leading up to the school library. Even as they approached them there was a clatter of feet on the concrete floor above, and a boy came flying down them four steps to his stride. Beneath one arm he carried a sheaf of books, and his straw hat was in the other hand. “Maddox,” said Hughes quietly, and on the moment Maddox took his last six steps in one leap, and nearly fell over them both.

  All the hero-worship of which David was capable flared up: never did hero make a more impressive entrance than in that long, lithe jump that landed him in the passage. He nearly knocked Hughes down, and dropped all his books, but caught him round the shoulders and steadied him again. There was a splendid crisp vigour about every line of his body, his black, short hair, his dark, full-blooded face.

  “Topknot, you silly owl!” he said. “Don’t get in a man’s light when he’s in a hurry. Haven’t hurt you, have I? I’d die sooner than hurt you.” David picked up the scattered books, and Maddox turned to him.

  “Oh, thanks awfully!” he said. “You’re Topknot’s pal, I suppose, come up for the scholarship-racket. Good luck!”

  He nodded to David, flicked the end of Hughes’s nose, and went off down the passage to the sixth-form room, whistling louder than even David thought possible.

  “Gosh!” said David. There was really nothing more to be said.

  “Oh, he’s always like that,” remarked Hughes, feeling that the meeting could not have been more impressive.

  “And he wished me good luck,” said David, still feeling dazzled. “Wasn’t that awfully jolly of him? And he flicked your nose, same as you might flick mine.”

  “Oh, Lord, yes,” said Hughes.

  After this all that immediately followed seemed but the setting and stage from which the chief actor had departed, for that glimpse of Maddox had been to David like some appearance of the spirit itself of public school. Soon they left the college buildings and walked down some quarter of a mile to where the red roofs of Adams’s rose between full-foliaged elms. They had to cross a broad, swift-flowing chalk-stream where rushes twitched in the current, and cushions of star-flowered water-weed waved, and Hughes pointed out the wagging tail of a great fat trout who was supposed to have baffled the wiles of all fishermen from time immemorial. Arrived at the house, they had to part, for David, as a guest, must present himself formally at the front door while Hughes went round through the yard, where stump-cricket was going on, to the boys’ quarters. There were cheerful cries of “Hullo, Topknot” and David, waiting for the bell to be answered, thrilled again at the thought of being part of all this. The idea of Mr. Adams was no longer formidable, though he had pictured him as being rather taller than the Head.

  He was shown through a big oak-panelled hall, into Mr. Adams’s study, and even if he had entered in trepidation, his fears would have been at once set at rest. In a long chair by the open window, with a pipe in his mouth, while two boys were leaning over the back of his chair, sat his master, clerical as to collar, but with a blazer on instead of a black coat. Just as David entered, one of the two boys, scarcely older than himself to all appearance, and with a shrill voice yet unbroken, was expostulating with him.

  “Oh, I say, do go back and construe that again, sir,” he said. “I wasn’t attending. Sorry.” Adams held out a hand to David.

  “That’s right, “ he said. “Delighted to see you. Just wait half a moment. Now, Ted, if you don’t attend this time, I will not go over it again.”

  Ted took an injured tone.

  “Well, there was a wasp,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault. Please get on quick, sir.”

  David thought he had never seen so pleasant a room, nor one which less suggested “school” as he had known it. The windows looked out on to a big lawn, in the centre of which two boys and a tall, black-haired girl, whom he conjectured to be Adams’s daughter, were playing croquet. Round the edge were cut five or six golf-holes where other boys were putting, slightly to the derangement of geranium beds, and half a dozen more were sitting in the shade of lime-trees reading and talking. Here inside, two occupied the sofa, and, as David waited for Ted to be construed to, another tall fellow strolled in and lay down on the hearthrug with an illustrated paper. The walls were lined with low bookshelves, on the top of which were strewn cricket-balls, books, and straw hats, while on the table in the centre was a litter of papers, and in the middle a great bowl of roses. Honeysuckle trailed trumpeted sprays over the spaces of open window, and the dark-stained floor was bright with Persian rugs.

  The construing was soon over, and Adams gave the book back to one of the boys. Then he who had lain down on the hearth-rug looked up from the paper.

  “Sir, Jessop’s coming down,” he said.

  Adams got up from his chair.

  “Then get him out at once with the very fastest ball ever bowled, Crookles,” he said.

  Some one from the sofa joined in.

  “Oh, don’t be too hard on him, Crookles,” he said. “Let him hit you over the pavilion a bit first.”

  David’s eyes took on their most reverential roundness. Without doubt this must be Cruikshank, the fastest bowler the school had ever had. And yet he had a casual private life of his own, and was called Crookles.

  “And here’s Blaize come down on purpose to see it all,” said Adams, “and incidentally to get a scholarship — eh, David?”

  Horrors! The Christian name again! But nobody appeared to think it the least ridiculous, any more than that Ted, who was climbing out of the window, should be known as Ted.

  Adams looked rather unfavourably at one of the two boys on the sofa.

  “Ozzy, go and wash your hands at once,” he said. “I won’t have fellows in here with dirty paws.”

  “Sir, mayn’t I just finish—” began Ozzy.

  “No: finish when you’re clean. Come out into the garden, David. How’s your father? Topknot met you at the station, didn’t he, and you’re going to have tea with him. We might find some strawberries.”

  David was packed off early to bed that night in order that his brain might be in its most efficient mood for his examination next day, in a whirl of happy excitement. Never in all his day-dreams had he conceived that Adams’s could be like this. It was not like a school, it was like some new and entrancing kind of home, with the jolliest man he had ever seen as a master and father, and for family these friendly boys, and the black-haired girl, Adams’s daughter, whom everybody called by her Christian name. And yet the glamour of public school lay over it, and among this happy family there moved, like ordinary mortals, the great ones of the earth, Maddox and Cruikshank, and Westcott, captain of the school fifteen, behaving like everybody else and seemingly unconscious of their divinity. And these heroes had been seen with his mortal eyes, and he had been taken by Hughes into Maddox’s
study after tea, where he had been permitted to help in washing up his tea-things. That to him was the Vatican, a room some twelve feet by ten in material dimensions, but a shrine, a centre. There were books everywhere — not school-books merely, but novels, books of poetry, books in French which Maddox read for his own amusement. Cricket-bats and a press of rackets were piled in the corner, and such space on the walls as was not filled with books was a mosaic of school photographs. And, perhaps most astounding of all, though Maddox had his school cricket colours, his racket and five colours, there was no trace of those glories anywhere; instead, on a nail behind the door, was hung a straw hat with just the house-colours on it, which David himself would be allowed to wear next September. Somehow that was tremendously grand: it was like a king who had the right to cover himself with stars and garters, preferring to go out to dinner in ordinary evening dress....

  David’s bedroom was in the private part of the house, but next door was one of the boys’ dormitories. Merry, muffled noises leaked through the walls, and from the open window of the dormitory there came into his room whistlings and cheerful riot, and from time to time the clump of boots kicked off on to the floor. By degrees these sounds grew quiet, but he still lay in wide-eyed contemplation and expectancy. The most trifling preoccupation was always sufficient to make him forget to say his prayers, and to-night he had got into bed without their ever occurring to him. But, as he lay awake, among the million surmises that came to him about life in this enchanted place, he wondered whether fellows in the house said their prayers, since chapel apparently was a thing to be proud of, and on the moment he tumbled out of bed and knelt down. But only one petition seemed possible, and he made it.

  “O Lord, let me get a scholarship and come to Adams’s,” he said very fervently.

  He thought for a moment, but really there seemed to be nothing else that his heart desired.

  “Amen,” he said, and, jumping into bed again, fell asleep.

  CHAPTER VI